J. Child Psychol. Psychiat., Vol. 16, 1975, pp. 79 to 83. Pergamon Press. Printed in Creat Britain.
GRID TECHNIQUES FOR CHILDREN A. T. RAVENETTE*
INTRODUCTION
As YET there exists no body of work on the clinical application of grid techniques for children. Livesley and Bromley (1973) however present a thoughtful and well documented account of the development of interpersonal perception through childhood to adolescence, which must be considered a standard reference to the subject, although its clinical relevance is less direct. THE CRID The grid was developed by Kelly (1955) as a technique whereby a client could be invited to disclose his ways (i.e. constructs) of discriminating his world of people (i.e. the elements) and to show in what ways they are in fact discriminated. His responses are entered into a grid which can then be analysed statistically to show the ways in which constructs are related and the ways in which people are perceived as alike or different. A full discussion of grid methodology is given by Bannister and Mair (1968) who also report important modifications of grid technique. These include the possibility of using photographs instead of real people and the provision of constructs by the investigator rather than the client. These modifications allow a wide range of statistical treatments to grid data and the possibility of standardizing the grid. These changes became an essential component in the development of grid techniques for children. CONSTRUCTS FOR CLINICAL USE A construct represents one way in which two things are alike in contrast to a third. It provides, in relation to people, a basis for identifying most personal interactions. With adults, personal constructs can be verbalized to varying extents but in early studies with children it was not found profitable to attempt to elicit a child's own verbal constructs. In any case there was no established work to indicate how a child's system of personal constructs developed. Kelly (op. cit.) suggests a progression from states of the organism, through individual persons (e.g. parents) to constructs which can be verbalized, and experience suggests that a person's actions may also represent a stage of construct development. These ideas have led to the provision of constructs for children to use which have been based on people and affective states, e.g. "would make mother angry/ •Senior Educational Psychologist, London Borough of Newham. Address for correspondence: Meadway House, 20 Meadway, Epsom, Surrey.
79
80
A. T. RAVENETTE
pleased", "teacher angry/pleased", "other children angry/pleased". Constructs can also be provided which relate to the complaint about the child, e.g. "doesn't like school". Not infrequently children do provide their own constructs spontaneously (e.g. bigheaded) and these can be built into a grid. In essence the grid then becomes a means of investigating hypotheses about the child in relation to his world of significant people, with special reference to how they affect him and he affects them. ELEMENTS
Any set of people, situations or objects may provide elements for a grid. There are difficulties, however, when a child is invited to construe real people in a systematic manner. Many children refuse to pass what they consider to be judgements about people. Many use different construct systems for adults than for their peers and many have different systems for contrasexual figures (see Livesley and Bromley, op. cit., for confirmation of this). It is possible, however, to use sets of photographs of same sex, same age children as elements for a grid since these help to overcome such difficulties. It is often more fruitful to use pictorial representations of situations as elements for a grid. The Pickford Projective Pictures (Pickford, 1968) offer a rich source of postcard size elements and the Family Relations Indicator (Howells and Lickorish, 1967) provides elements which are specifically family based. (Currently the author is using a set of school based situations specifically designed by Mr. E. Jordan.) When situations are used the child is specifically invited to see himself as a person in the situation. In general the number of elements should be seven or eight when the child is asked to rank order them. An alternative method uses 16/18 elements and the child is invited to place elements within two opposite categories (e.g. "mother would be pleased", "mother would be angry") or into a "don't know" category (Ravenette, 1964, 1970). ANALYSIS OF CRIDS For rank ordered grids Spearman's rank order correlation is used, for "categories" grids, matching scores are used. The resulting correlation matrix can be analysed by principle components programmes (Slater, undated) or more easily by Hierarchical Linkage Analysis (McQjaitty, 1966). The latter method can be carried out very simply "by hand" and produces very similar results to those from the computer. The outcome of the analysis indicates how constructs go together and how elements are related within the construct system. A "two-way" analysis for elements within clusters has recently been developed (Ravenette, 1972) which isolates the infiuence of specific elements within each cluster of constructs. FURTHER ELABORATION The administration of a grid can act as a powerful technique for eliciting the child's own constructions of the elements with which he has been operating. To this end he is invited to talk fully about each element after he has completed the grid. In this way it is possible to link the use of the investigator's prescribed con-
81
ANNOTATION
structs to the child's spontaneous constructions of photographs or situations by means of the statistical analysis of the grid itself. The two-way analysis is based on this further elaboration. AN EXAMPLE Matthew is ten years old. He chooses not to work at school, is aggressive to other children and sometimes defiant to teachers. He is the older of two adopted boys in a lower middle class family. A school situations grid with eight elements and eight constructs was used and the constructs refer to self, teachers, other children and parents as the significant people and "pleased" and "different from" as affective states. Specifically M was invited to choose, in turn, the situations in which he would most likely be pleased with himself, and least likely to be pleased with himself, and the process was repeated until all situations were rank ordered. The same procedure was then used for each of the 8 constructs. The rank ordered data appears in Table 1 and the resultant correlation matrix in Table 2. TABLE 1. RANK ORDERS FOR EACH SITUATION BY CONSTRUCTS
7
5 4
7 2
2 5
6 3
3 6
4 7
1 8
8 1
CO NO
Situations 4 5 6
7 4
4 5
3 2
5 1
6 6
1 7
CO CO
2 5
7 2
5 6
CO CO
Constructs Most likely that/least likely that 1. You would be pleased with yourself 2. Teachers would think you are different from other children in class 3. Other children would be pleased with you 4. Parents would think you are different from other children in the class 5. Parents would be pleased with you 6. Other children would think you were different from them 7. Teachers would be pleased with you 8. You would feel different from other children in the class
6 4
4 7
1 8
8 1
TABLE 2. CORRELATION MATRIX TO SHOW CONSTRUCT RELATIONSHIPS
8
1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0-95 0-90 0-60 0-31 0-60 0-90 031
0-90 0-64 0-33 0-57 0-88 0-26
0-55 0-38 0-62 0-93 0-31
048 0-93 0-64 0-79
0-62 0-64 0-76
0-74 0-90
0-55
It can be seen in Table 1 that the odd numbered constructs are in general the reverse of the even numbered constructs. In the correlational analysis the even numbered constructs have been reversed with a consequent reversal of the meaning of the constructs. Hierarchical Linkage Analysis showing how the constructs go together, is presented in Fig. 1. Two observations can be made from this analysis. In the first place it seems broadly the case that for Matthew, to be pleased with himself and for others to be pleased with him he must see himself, and others must see him, as the same as other children. He is very aware however that he is, by virtue of his being adopted, different from other children. In the second place the two clusters separately suggest that he is sensitive to differences in the interpersonal contexts provided by teachers on the one hand and his parents on the other.
82
A. T. RAVENETTE
Pleased with self Teachers see you as the same as other children
2"^
^90\
Cluster
Other children pleased with you Teachers pleased with you Parents think you are the same as other children Other children think you are the same as them
^-''"^""^^^
\
Cluster B
You would feel the same as other children Parents would be pleased with you FIG. 1. Hierarchical linkage analysis for constructs. The results of a two-way analysis are indicated with the actual stories which M told. Situations labelled A and B respectively refer to Clusters A and B and the subscript + and — indicate the two ends of the Construct Cluster (i.e. most likely as opposed to least likely). THE SITUATIONS AS DESCRIBED BY MATTHEW 1. Teacher is telling off one of the boys in class for not doing his work. ((2,. I'm not the boy being told off. I'm helping the teacher get out of his seat in case the boy tries to run out of the classroom.) (Clusters-.) 2. I like football. I seemed a lot peaceful {sic) when I'm playing football than at other times. (Q.. I'm helping the other boy up, he may have tripped. Helping the boy is important.) (Cluster
A+ B+.)
3. A whole school in the hall singing hymns together. (Q,. I'm on the dais, I like to sing out. I would like to be called out.) (Cluster A — .) 4. A few people in the classroom doing the normal work doing some sums at the time. (Q,. I'd like to be one of them really.) 5. If I was in that picture I'd like to be able to do some work on my own. (Cluster B-\-.) 6. Nice peaceful setting, not too far away from the house, a bike shed. (Q,. I'd like to go to that school. He sees this as a different school.) (Cluster A —.) 7. Some of the people are mucking about in the class. (Q,. I'm picking up the boy whose fallen and cut himself.) (Cluster A— B-.) 8. People playing in the playground, apparatus, ropes and slides. It would be good fun to play there. {Q_. I would be climbing up the rope.) (Cluster A+ fi+.) This material suggests a wealth of observations from which in relation ot the two-way cluster analysis, an understanding of Matthew might be inferred. The exercise, however, goes beyond the scope of this paper. CONCLUSIONS
Grid techniques provide flexihle means whereby children can he invited to communicate various aspects of the ways in which they affect, and are affected hy, their world of people. They are suitable for children from about the age of eight years and upwards. They are fairly quick to administer, and the statistical analysis is easily carried out by the psychologist himself. They have the special advantage of involving the child directly in looking at himself and others.
ANNOTATION
83
Two novel grid techniques in relation to the family are currently heing developed and it is hoped to present these at a later date. REFERENCES BANNISTER, D . and MAIR, J. M. M. (1968) The Evaluation of Personal Constructs. Academic Press, New York. HOWELLS, J. G. and LICKORISH,J. R . (1967) The Eamily Relations Indicator. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh. KELLY, G . A. (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Norton, New York. LIVESLEY, W . J. and BROMLEY, D . B . (1973) Person Perception in Childhood and Adolescence. Wiley, New York. MCQUITTY, L . (1966) Single and multiple hierarchical classification by reciprocal pairs and rank order types. Educ. Psychol. Meas. 26, 253-265. PICKFORD, P. W. (1968) Pickford Projective Pictures. Tavistock, London. SLATER, P. (undated) The Principal Components of a Repertory Grid. (Monograph) Vincent Andrews, London. R A V E N E T T E , A. T . (1964) Some Attempt at the Use of Developing Repertory Grid Techniques in a Child
Guidance Clinic (Edited by WARREN, N . ) . Proc. Brunei Symposium. RAVENETTE, A. T. (1966) The situation grid: A further development of grid techniques with children. Unpublished M.S. Thesis. RAVENETTE, A. T. (1970) A further development of the situations grid: Use of a certainty/uncertainty dimension. Unpublished M.S. RAVENETTE, A. T. (1972) The two-way analysis of one 8 x 8 grid. Unpublished M.S.
GRID TECHNIQUES FOR CHILDREN A. T. RAVENETTE*
INTRODUCTION
As YET there exists no body of work on the clinical application of grid techniques for children. Livesley and Bromley (1973) however present a thoughtful and well documented account of the development of interpersonal perception through childhood to adolescence, which must be considered a standard reference to the subject, although its clinical relevance is less direct. THE CRID The grid was developed by Kelly (1955) as a technique whereby a client could be invited to disclose his ways (i.e. constructs) of discriminating his world of people (i.e. the elements) and to show in what ways they are in fact discriminated. His responses are entered into a grid which can then be analysed statistically to show the ways in which constructs are related and the ways in which people are perceived as alike or different. A full discussion of grid methodology is given by Bannister and Mair (1968) who also report important modifications of grid technique. These include the possibility of using photographs instead of real people and the provision of constructs by the investigator rather than the client. These modifications allow a wide range of statistical treatments to grid data and the possibility of standardizing the grid. These changes became an essential component in the development of grid techniques for children. CONSTRUCTS FOR CLINICAL USE A construct represents one way in which two things are alike in contrast to a third. It provides, in relation to people, a basis for identifying most personal interactions. With adults, personal constructs can be verbalized to varying extents but in early studies with children it was not found profitable to attempt to elicit a child's own verbal constructs. In any case there was no established work to indicate how a child's system of personal constructs developed. Kelly (op. cit.) suggests a progression from states of the organism, through individual persons (e.g. parents) to constructs which can be verbalized, and experience suggests that a person's actions may also represent a stage of construct development. These ideas have led to the provision of constructs for children to use which have been based on people and affective states, e.g. "would make mother angry/ •Senior Educational Psychologist, London Borough of Newham. Address for correspondence: Meadway House, 20 Meadway, Epsom, Surrey.
79
80
A. T. RAVENETTE
pleased", "teacher angry/pleased", "other children angry/pleased". Constructs can also be provided which relate to the complaint about the child, e.g. "doesn't like school". Not infrequently children do provide their own constructs spontaneously (e.g. bigheaded) and these can be built into a grid. In essence the grid then becomes a means of investigating hypotheses about the child in relation to his world of significant people, with special reference to how they affect him and he affects them. ELEMENTS
Any set of people, situations or objects may provide elements for a grid. There are difficulties, however, when a child is invited to construe real people in a systematic manner. Many children refuse to pass what they consider to be judgements about people. Many use different construct systems for adults than for their peers and many have different systems for contrasexual figures (see Livesley and Bromley, op. cit., for confirmation of this). It is possible, however, to use sets of photographs of same sex, same age children as elements for a grid since these help to overcome such difficulties. It is often more fruitful to use pictorial representations of situations as elements for a grid. The Pickford Projective Pictures (Pickford, 1968) offer a rich source of postcard size elements and the Family Relations Indicator (Howells and Lickorish, 1967) provides elements which are specifically family based. (Currently the author is using a set of school based situations specifically designed by Mr. E. Jordan.) When situations are used the child is specifically invited to see himself as a person in the situation. In general the number of elements should be seven or eight when the child is asked to rank order them. An alternative method uses 16/18 elements and the child is invited to place elements within two opposite categories (e.g. "mother would be pleased", "mother would be angry") or into a "don't know" category (Ravenette, 1964, 1970). ANALYSIS OF CRIDS For rank ordered grids Spearman's rank order correlation is used, for "categories" grids, matching scores are used. The resulting correlation matrix can be analysed by principle components programmes (Slater, undated) or more easily by Hierarchical Linkage Analysis (McQjaitty, 1966). The latter method can be carried out very simply "by hand" and produces very similar results to those from the computer. The outcome of the analysis indicates how constructs go together and how elements are related within the construct system. A "two-way" analysis for elements within clusters has recently been developed (Ravenette, 1972) which isolates the infiuence of specific elements within each cluster of constructs. FURTHER ELABORATION The administration of a grid can act as a powerful technique for eliciting the child's own constructions of the elements with which he has been operating. To this end he is invited to talk fully about each element after he has completed the grid. In this way it is possible to link the use of the investigator's prescribed con-
81
ANNOTATION
structs to the child's spontaneous constructions of photographs or situations by means of the statistical analysis of the grid itself. The two-way analysis is based on this further elaboration. AN EXAMPLE Matthew is ten years old. He chooses not to work at school, is aggressive to other children and sometimes defiant to teachers. He is the older of two adopted boys in a lower middle class family. A school situations grid with eight elements and eight constructs was used and the constructs refer to self, teachers, other children and parents as the significant people and "pleased" and "different from" as affective states. Specifically M was invited to choose, in turn, the situations in which he would most likely be pleased with himself, and least likely to be pleased with himself, and the process was repeated until all situations were rank ordered. The same procedure was then used for each of the 8 constructs. The rank ordered data appears in Table 1 and the resultant correlation matrix in Table 2. TABLE 1. RANK ORDERS FOR EACH SITUATION BY CONSTRUCTS
7
5 4
7 2
2 5
6 3
3 6
4 7
1 8
8 1
CO NO
Situations 4 5 6
7 4
4 5
3 2
5 1
6 6
1 7
CO CO
2 5
7 2
5 6
CO CO
Constructs Most likely that/least likely that 1. You would be pleased with yourself 2. Teachers would think you are different from other children in class 3. Other children would be pleased with you 4. Parents would think you are different from other children in the class 5. Parents would be pleased with you 6. Other children would think you were different from them 7. Teachers would be pleased with you 8. You would feel different from other children in the class
6 4
4 7
1 8
8 1
TABLE 2. CORRELATION MATRIX TO SHOW CONSTRUCT RELATIONSHIPS
8
1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
0-95 0-90 0-60 0-31 0-60 0-90 031
0-90 0-64 0-33 0-57 0-88 0-26
0-55 0-38 0-62 0-93 0-31
048 0-93 0-64 0-79
0-62 0-64 0-76
0-74 0-90
0-55
It can be seen in Table 1 that the odd numbered constructs are in general the reverse of the even numbered constructs. In the correlational analysis the even numbered constructs have been reversed with a consequent reversal of the meaning of the constructs. Hierarchical Linkage Analysis showing how the constructs go together, is presented in Fig. 1. Two observations can be made from this analysis. In the first place it seems broadly the case that for Matthew, to be pleased with himself and for others to be pleased with him he must see himself, and others must see him, as the same as other children. He is very aware however that he is, by virtue of his being adopted, different from other children. In the second place the two clusters separately suggest that he is sensitive to differences in the interpersonal contexts provided by teachers on the one hand and his parents on the other.
82
A. T. RAVENETTE
Pleased with self Teachers see you as the same as other children
2"^
^90\
Cluster
Other children pleased with you Teachers pleased with you Parents think you are the same as other children Other children think you are the same as them
^-''"^""^^^
\
Cluster B
You would feel the same as other children Parents would be pleased with you FIG. 1. Hierarchical linkage analysis for constructs. The results of a two-way analysis are indicated with the actual stories which M told. Situations labelled A and B respectively refer to Clusters A and B and the subscript + and — indicate the two ends of the Construct Cluster (i.e. most likely as opposed to least likely). THE SITUATIONS AS DESCRIBED BY MATTHEW 1. Teacher is telling off one of the boys in class for not doing his work. ((2,. I'm not the boy being told off. I'm helping the teacher get out of his seat in case the boy tries to run out of the classroom.) (Clusters-.) 2. I like football. I seemed a lot peaceful {sic) when I'm playing football than at other times. (Q.. I'm helping the other boy up, he may have tripped. Helping the boy is important.) (Cluster
A+ B+.)
3. A whole school in the hall singing hymns together. (Q,. I'm on the dais, I like to sing out. I would like to be called out.) (Cluster A — .) 4. A few people in the classroom doing the normal work doing some sums at the time. (Q,. I'd like to be one of them really.) 5. If I was in that picture I'd like to be able to do some work on my own. (Cluster B-\-.) 6. Nice peaceful setting, not too far away from the house, a bike shed. (Q,. I'd like to go to that school. He sees this as a different school.) (Cluster A —.) 7. Some of the people are mucking about in the class. (Q,. I'm picking up the boy whose fallen and cut himself.) (Cluster A— B-.) 8. People playing in the playground, apparatus, ropes and slides. It would be good fun to play there. {Q_. I would be climbing up the rope.) (Cluster A+ fi+.) This material suggests a wealth of observations from which in relation ot the two-way cluster analysis, an understanding of Matthew might be inferred. The exercise, however, goes beyond the scope of this paper. CONCLUSIONS
Grid techniques provide flexihle means whereby children can he invited to communicate various aspects of the ways in which they affect, and are affected hy, their world of people. They are suitable for children from about the age of eight years and upwards. They are fairly quick to administer, and the statistical analysis is easily carried out by the psychologist himself. They have the special advantage of involving the child directly in looking at himself and others.
ANNOTATION
83
Two novel grid techniques in relation to the family are currently heing developed and it is hoped to present these at a later date. REFERENCES BANNISTER, D . and MAIR, J. M. M. (1968) The Evaluation of Personal Constructs. Academic Press, New York. HOWELLS, J. G. and LICKORISH,J. R . (1967) The Eamily Relations Indicator. Oliver & Boyd, Edinburgh. KELLY, G . A. (1955) The Psychology of Personal Constructs. Norton, New York. LIVESLEY, W . J. and BROMLEY, D . B . (1973) Person Perception in Childhood and Adolescence. Wiley, New York. MCQUITTY, L . (1966) Single and multiple hierarchical classification by reciprocal pairs and rank order types. Educ. Psychol. Meas. 26, 253-265. PICKFORD, P. W. (1968) Pickford Projective Pictures. Tavistock, London. SLATER, P. (undated) The Principal Components of a Repertory Grid. (Monograph) Vincent Andrews, London. R A V E N E T T E , A. T . (1964) Some Attempt at the Use of Developing Repertory Grid Techniques in a Child
Guidance Clinic (Edited by WARREN, N . ) . Proc. Brunei Symposium. RAVENETTE, A. T. (1966) The situation grid: A further development of grid techniques with children. Unpublished M.S. Thesis. RAVENETTE, A. T. (1970) A further development of the situations grid: Use of a certainty/uncertainty dimension. Unpublished M.S. RAVENETTE, A. T. (1972) The two-way analysis of one 8 x 8 grid. Unpublished M.S.
