Re dependency grids,
The major series of empirical studies in this area has been conducted by myself
with colleagues and students. Most of this is not published yet. Currently,
for example, there are five studies running here in Wollongong.
The first and central paper is Walker, Ramsey and Bell (IJPCP, 1988, vol 1(1)),
which provided a way of operationalising dispersion of dependency in terms of
these grids, the statistic used being one from biology, and included in my
version of GPACK.
Since then Charlie Stefan has a study on recidivism in psychiatric patients
(IJPCP) as do Chiari, Nuzzo et al (Journal of Constructivist Psych, 1994). The
latter use both helping and being helped grids, as indeed I have also in prior
unpublished work. My latest paper on this issue is a clinical one in Leitner
and Dunnett (1993) Critical Issues in Personal Construct Psychotherapy,
Krieger.
We have explored other ways of analysing the grids, we being Fred Ramsey, a
biometrician from Oregon, Richard Bell and Pip Pattison (Melbourne uni) and
Peter Caputi (now Wollongong). They present certain problems for usual grid
analyses, because traditionally they have binary data. The new version of
Gpack, for which an untested beta version has been completed by Richard using
Fred's original program, incorporates the dispersion of dependency index along
with various methods of analysis of repgrids. None of our other possible ways
of analysis have yet seen the light of day.
Re sexual identity.
A former Ph.D. student of mine, Shashi Ravindar, has published two papers based
on the idea of mine she used for her thesis whereby the constructs obtained
from role construct rep grids in which self is always included in the trids,
are rated by the repgrid completer on their relevance to masculinity and
femininity. This gets round a number of problems with traditional approaches,
such as Bem's sex role inventory, where a cultural stereotype that is not
necessarily that of the participant is used to assess the participants degree
of masculinity/ femininity and androgyny. Shashi did cross-cultural comparison
of Australia and India. Her papers are in the journals Sex Roles and J. of
Cross-cultural psych.
Hope that is of some use.
Regards,
Beverly Walker, University of Wollongong, Australia.
b.walker@uow.edu.au