THE REPERTORY GRID A Critical Appraisal Volume 2 1ö 9y BEST COPY AVAILABLE Variable print quality PAGE 4 NUMBERING AS ORIGINAL, Contents Volume 2 13. Excursus: to sail beyond the sunset... 458 13.1 Introduction 459 13.2 The poverty of physicalism 461 13.3 Personal construct theory and interpretation 471 13.4 The evolution of hermeneutics 473 13.5 Action as text? A digression on interpretation and explanation 479 13.6. First and second order construing 484 13.7 The problem of understanding 487 13.8 Researching within a personal construct hermeneutic framework 494 13.8.1 The problem of communication 495 13.8.2 Accounts as evidence in the human sciences 497 13.8.3 Accounts: some general issues regarding methodology 499 13.8.4 The role of the researcher 503 13.8.5 Three methods of eliciting an account 504 13.8.6 A systematic approach to the elicitation of accounts 509 13.8.7 Interpretation 515 13.9 Some broader implications for research 523 13.9.1 Experience of the researcher 523 13.9.2 Dialectics of interpretation 525 13.9.3 Contact between researcher and respondent 525 13.9.4 Methodological individualism and generalisation 528 14. Envoi 536 Notes 539 Notes to Chapter 1 540 Notes to Chapter 2 540 Notes to Chapter 3 546 Notes to Chapter 4 554 Notes to Chapter 5 557 Notes to Chapter 6 56o Notes to Chapter 7 565 Notes to Chapter 8 566 Notes to Chapter 9 571 Notes to Chapter 10 575 Notes to Chapter 11. 578 Notes-to Chapter 12 581 Notes to Chapter 13 582 Notes to Chapter 14 590 References 591 Appendices Endpapers. 13 Excursus To beyond the sail sunset ... It is not grid method as such, which is important, it is the exploration of personal constructs. D. Bannister and J. M.M. Mair 1968 1 217 13.1 INTRODUCTION The critique that I have slowly built up regarding the repertory grid (and, to a lesser extent, Personal Construct Theory) strongly suggests the need for a reappraisal of the way in which research within the Kellian tradition is both conceptualised and undertaken. If the more radical aspects of the critique are construed as valid, then the need for reappraisal becomes urgent. A full reappraisal lies beyond the scope of the present work, but I hope in this chapter to give a clear indication of some of the main issues involved. It has to be said at this point that the argument which follows is limited to those aspects of the human sciences which are bounded by methodological individualism, since this captures in 1 practical terms the recovery of individuals as individuals through the medium of personal constructs. The question of generalisation is touched on at the end of the chapter, but the broader reaches of sociology lie (which outside its terms of reference is not to imply that aspects of my argument would be irrelevant: here I am merely recognising the differences in levels of conceptualisation and analysis). A characteristic of the human sciences that distinguishes them from the physical sciences is their comparative looseness of theoretical articulation. This looseness derives from the construing of the subjects of research, which introduces a second-level set of variables into the proceedings. Predictions in the human sciences are thus at the mercy of many more uncontrolled variables than in the case with the physical 2 sciences. My exploration of these issues in Section 13.2 leads me towards concluding first that the centre of focus of the human sciences is the understanding of events and of the way in which first-and second- level variables interact and, second, that paradigms based upon the 459 physical sciences cannot address this type of problem. Despite all Kelly's Physicalist rhetoric about prediction and control, 'The Psychology of Personal Constructs' bears substantial witness to an alternative perspective, that of the historian. To read Kelly whilst wearing the spectacles of the historian is to throw into sharp relief his own role as an interpreter and explainer of the psychological problems with which he is confronted. There is surprisingly little of 'Kelly the scientist' (despite his claimed theoretical stance, and rather a lot of 'Kelly the historian' in his writing. I pick out as an example - there are many others in his two volumes - Chapter 7, entitled 'The analysis of self-characterization', which is a sustained exercise in hermeneutics. Even his view of testing is dominated by the need to reveal as much as possible of his clients' construing and psychological resources. 'Reveal' here implies not only the elicitation of constructs but also the interpretive activity of making connections, and Kelly largely leaves the existential matters of prediction and control to his clients. This chapter, then, is based upon a switch of metaphor from the scientist to the historian, and reflects the crucial importance of understanding in both explanation and theory building. This shift in perspective does not imply a claim that people are any more accurate as historians than as scientists, for many of the objections to the ' commonsense scientist' outlined in Chapter 2 can be carried over to the 'commonsense historian'. Rather, it underpins my discussion of the conduct of research in the human sciences and the world view under which this might be subsumed. Following a brief consideration of the weaknesses of paradigms from the 460 physical sciences (as far as human activities are concerned), I consider the nature of hermeneutics. Some space has to be given to the semantics of this term in view of the number of changes in its meaning over time. This leads to a discussion (starting from a phenomenological perspective, but ultimately going beyond it) of a critical issue for methodological individualism - that of how a researcher comes to understand what a respondent is conveying. Having dealt with these theoretical matters, I return to my main theme of practical methodology and its superordinate question: how, given all the problems of distortion associated with personal accounts of experience, can research in the Kellian tradition be made maximally systematic and rigorous without formalisation destroying what a 3 respondent might wish to say? In this longest section of the chapter I attempt to establish how research conceived from a hermeneutic perspective can be operationalised in a manner that remains consistent with the philosophical assumptions of the underlying theory. 13.2 THE POVERTYOF PHYSICALISM If a block of ice is taken from a refrigerator and placed in a warm room, one would predict that it would melt. The prediction, for a scientist, would be informed by a theoretical framework embodying thermodynamic and kinetic considerations coupled with the weight of past experience. The prediction may be expressed in general terms: Assuming a set of theoretical statements T, and given initial conditions W, an entity X will act in an observable manner Z. Accepting for the moment the structural equivalence between prediction 4, and explanation the change W; X-#Z can only be explained with reference to T, even though the generalisation of experience alone may 461 be sufficient for prediction. In these circumstances, the relationship between W and Z is independent of which particular instance of X is taken. 5. Not every observable event in the physical sciences is as clear-cut The decay of radioactive atoms and the formation of alternative products in organic chemical reactions can only be expressed in probabilistic terms: W, X and Z can be specified with fair precision, but T may be insufficient to provide an adequate explanation of why one atom may decay before another or why a particular proportionation of products is observed. Data here is underdetermined by theory: further predictions are possible on the grounds of experience but not in terms of theory. The situation at root is a sophisticated parallel of the Babylonians' predicting of tides. There is a long tradition, extending back beyond the beginnings of behaviourism, of attempts to constitute psychology as an experimental science. Experimentation in psychology seeks to reduce the complexity of the test environment to manageable proportions in order to eliminate extraneous influences on the theoretical relationship being investigated. The Skinnerian experiments on operant conditioning, for instance, investigated the relationship between reward and behaviour. The subjects - here pigeons - are treated as unthinking entities whose behaviour is a function of the conditions controlled by the experimenter. The results are persuasive: conditioning works. Pigeons learn 6 behaviours. Theory begins its transmutation into law. However, when animals constitute the set of entities denoted by X, a variation in performance creeps into the results by virtue of differences 462 in capacity to perform the task. Learning curves are not identical even though they might exhibit the same structural characteristics. The relationship between W and Z is to some extent influenced by the particular entity X used in the experiment. This leads one to consider the extension of experimentation to human subjects, which is more germane to the present purpose. Whilst there is now a wide range of sophisticated experimental designs available to the researcher, their basic form is to subject one group to an experimental treatment whilst another acts as a control7. The outcomes are measured, and the researcher assesses the extent to which the hypotheses have been supported, the findings typically being presented in terms of means and deviations from the means. The relationship between W and Z is rendered problematic to an extent dependent upon the 'indi- vidual difference' deviations observed. It is not too large a conceptual jump to see the subjects of such experiments in the role of Skinner's pigeons, in that often no attention is paid to any constructions they might have regarding the experimental )observes, situation.