5.2 A STANCE TOWARDS ANALYSIS
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You’ll notice that the techniques have been grouped and ordered, according to
the extent to which the interviewee can recognise the implications of the
analysis. As soon as you move away from the grid interview as a social
encounter, and come back to the reasons for which you’re conducting the
interview, the investigatory or research design which you’re following, and
the kinds of analysis you’re going to make of the interviewee’s grid material,
then issues of stance, expertise, and communication are raised. Without
making a song and dance about them, we need to consider them briefly, since
they’re rather important.
You’ll recall doing Exercise 4.2 after you’d read the previous chapter.
(Assuming you did the exercise. I hope so. Life is pointless otherwise.) The
purpose was unremarkable. I wanted you to practise pyramiding, the
technique I’d just described. In doing so, though, I asked you to do two things.
Firstly, I asked you to take on a reason in inspecting the grid which would not
necessarily be anticipated by the interviewee. Here, you were addressing a
research question (whether there is a relationship between the importance of a
construct and the ease with which subordinate constructs can be identified)
that your interviewee may not have shared. You had objectives different to
those of your interviewee. Secondly, you were asked to express a personal
opinion about the constructs: to characterise them.
All analysis has those two properties. The objectives of the person doing the
analysis may differ from those of the person who provided the material, and
the person doing the analysis is involved in making judgements about that
material.
Doesn’t this negate, you might wonder, all the assumptions outlined earlier
about the interviewee being the definitive authority about his or her own
constructs? Moreover, if we were right about constructive alternativism (that
there’s always more than one way of making sense of anything), how on earth
can we claim to an authoritative analysis? Who am I to decide what sort of
constructs a person has? What kind they are? They’re not mine, so whence the
privileged view? More generally, how much of myself do I put into any study
as a result of the analysis that I do?
The simple answer is that you have asmuch right to make your sense of the world as
your interviewee has. The judgements and interpretations you make of the material
you analyse are as much part of your own view of the world as the material you’re
analysing is part of the interviewee’s. If interviewees believe that constructs are
found under gooseberry bushes, that is their right. They are the final authority in
managing the interpretations they make of their own worlds.But, by the same token,
youhaveyourownunderstandings, andtheseincludeyour interpretations of the other
person.You are the final authority in managing any interpretation of your interpretations.
You may have good reason, based on your own experience, for believing that
gooseberry bushes don’t come into it and that one should look elsewhere for
constructs.
But what if the interviewee doesn’t agree with your analysis and conclusions?
That’s a bit more complicated, isn’t it? I understand the reason for being a
faithful recorder and taking the interviewee at their word in eliciting the
constructs themselves, as we discussed in Section 4.1. ‘Credulous listening’ is
all very well, but ‘credulous analysis’ is a flabby way of resolving a
disagreement of interpretation, I’d have thought.
Okay, let’s look at it step by step.
Firstly, there is the question of representation.Given that you have jointly negotiated
the interviewee’s meanings, and that you initiated the encounter in the first place, it
doesmeanthat you’reresponsibleif youmisrepresent theinformationtheinterviewee
provides, just as the interviewee must live with the consequences of his or her own
way of construing.Before you do your analysis, you have to get the basic information
down accurately, evenif you believe that information to be‘erroneous’ in someway.
Next. You have access to a body of knowledge and technique (personal construct
theoryand repertory grid technique) which the interviewee has not.
The purpose of all analysis, investigation, and research is to cometo understandings
which are useful ^ which seemto lead to accurate predictions about what willhappen
next.Thisis truewhether we’re talking about the investigationthat isbeing carried out
by theintervieweetryingtounderstandhisorherexperience, or the onebeingcarried
out by you as you try to make sense of your interviewee as part of your own investigatory
or research purpose.
Now, your own activities are informed by a body of knowledge, personal construct
psychology, to which a lot of people subscribe; a lot of work has been done on it. It’s a
consensus that hasemerged because it made sense in the past to those who seek to
understand other people, and it may (I do not say will) lead to predictionswhichwork
better than your interviewee’s. And, provided you have used the techniques as they
are intended, you are likely to come to conclusions which those other people would
also have come to, given the sameinformation.
So if, after all that, you and the interviewee still disagree, then, ultimately, all you can
do is agree to differ, and see whose predictions turn out to bemore accurate.
Either of you could be unsuccessful in those predictions. The interviewee because
s/he’sstopped checkingsomepart ofhisorherbeliefs, perhaps.Andyou, becauseno
technique or procedure isperfectly reliable, orbecause you’vemade amisjudgement
inmakinginferencesintheanalysis, orbecauseyouand the collegialconsensushave
yet to realise that the interviewee’s understanding is indeed more effective than their
own sincetheappropriate evidenceisnotyet in, or isunrealisedby themto berelevant
to the issue in question. In themeantime, you’re both trying to get by in understanding
the bit of theworld that’s engaging you at that time.
I can’t be sure if this line of reasoning works with people who are in spectacular,
bizarre, and distressed disagreement with others ^ I’m thinking of some of the
clinical patients with whom the repertory grid can be used as part of diagnosis and
treatment. I rather think that it does, but it’s notmy field.
Now, take this line of reasoning one step further. In talking about a body of knowledge
to which many people subscribe, I’m saying that knowledge is socially defined. (This
argument isbest outlinedin Berger & Luckmann,1976.) Personalunderstandingsmay
have to relate to a constituency. Indeed, to more than one constituency (you will
probably have heard of role conflict, for example?), and the people in those constituenciesmay
varyinwhat theyexpect andunderstandwhenthey, inturn, seek theirown
meaning in existence.Whatever you discover by means of your analysis will also be
given sense andmeaning by other people; they will construe your construing of your
interviewee’s construing! Thisneeds thinking about, and carriesimplications for your
choice of analysis technique.
In fact, your choice of analysis technique depends on three factors:
(a) how well it summarises your interviewee’s meanings
(b) how well it allows you to draw inferences and conclusions from them
(c) how well it communicates this to your own constituency.
If you’re a student reading this book to help prepare a term report, bear your
lecturer’s expectations and knowledge of grid technique in mind. This is
particularly important in the case of doctoral students and their supervisors:
what kinds of analysis does your supervisor expect, and what is s/he
comfortable with given the subject matter of your dissertation? Repertory
grids are not a widely known technique. How much explanation of what
you’re doing will you have to provide them? How important is it to them that
you take an approach that comes over as quantitatively inspired? And how
will you explain it all to them?
If you’re a manager or professional with an occupational application in mind,
the issue of communication with a constituency is the same, but the question is
slightly different. When you write the report and executive summary of your
grid-based job analysis/development review/OD intervention, how can you
best summarise the results of your analysis without all the technical jargon?
Finally, if you’re neither a student nor a manager – simply someone who’s
interested in understanding other people – you also have a constituency, and
that’s the interviewee him- or herself. How well can you explain the basis of
your analysis if s/he asks you about the ways in which you have come to your
understanding of his/her understanding?