Re: Introduction and request for advice

Chris Evans (C.Evans@sghms.ac.uk)
Thu, 8 Feb 1996 13:27:55 +0000

... snip...

> Perhaps rather than going on talking about myself I could ask for
> some advice on my study?? I would greatly appreciate any comments
> and suggestions you are willing to make.
>
> Experienced and less experienced faculty will complete a repertory
> grid with fifteen supplied elements. Constructs will be elicited
> from respondents on the basis of twenty randomly selected triads.
> They will rate each element (on a scale from 1 to 5) successively on
> each construct. This will yield 300 data points per respondent.
> Respondents will be from various Canadian research universities.
>
> In theory this project sounds quite feasible, doesn't it? However,
> I have been getting some doubts recently. It seems to me that the
> process of completing the grid is very time-consuming and
> I am no longer sure whether faculty will actually take the time and
>
> complete the grid for me (and I will need at least thirty faculty in
> each group). Does anybody have some experience with administering
> the grid "by mail" and could give me some advice in terms of how the
> process could be made easier, quicker, etc??

Dear Carolin,

Welcome to this excellent list. You tell us a little about your
intentions in this study but not enough for us to see the minutiae of
the connection between those ideas and the grid design you have (very
shrewd) concerns about. That limits the detail we can give so you
might like to say a bit more about how you are intending to analyse
the grids and link that to your intentions. However, my thoughts at
this stage are:
a) you're right to be worried
b) I have known postal completion of triadic elicitation of grids but
it is pushing your respondents collaboration hard and the grids
in question were much smaller and the respondents quite motivated
c) the grid _IS_ large

I would wonder whether you can't use a fixed construct grid but
obviously that sacrifices most of the flexibility of the technique
(though it can open up new avenues in a very useful way). Failing
that I'd recommend a smaller grid (8x8 to 10x10 or thereabouts) and
dyadic or even single anchored elicitation or even some non-element
anchored elicitation.

Do you feel you can tell us more about the study?

Chris
Chris Evans, Senior Lecturer, ||| Psychotherapy Section
Cranmer Terrace ||| Dept.Ment.Health.Sci.
London SW17 0RE ||| St. George's Hosp.Med.Sch.
Britain ||| University of London
Tel/fax.: (+44|0) 181 725 2540 ||| Email: C.Evans@sghms.ac.uk
World Wide Web:http://www.sghms.ac.uk/mhs/psychotherapy/intro.htm

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