>Does this mean it's not such a bright idea after all, to use rep. grid
>methods to investigate these changes?
I'm beat, here! _This has nothing in particular to do with using a grid,
for Pete's sake: it's true of any technique one could use_
_Please_ don't make it a reason for not using a grid!
I have no good ways of handling a situation in which one's research
technique might influence the processes being studied, except the usual
thoughts that:
a) it's inevitable
b) there's some sort of pressure to keep track of this process, the
better to discern where one has, and has not, made a difference to one's
observations
c) techniques to assess the reliability of one's conclusions are always
advisable.
I get the feeling that you're looking for a "test-like" procedure, which
comes with a background which assures the integrity of what you're doing.
If so, there are a number of people, J.Maxwell Legge being one by the
sound of it, who've done an awful lot to provide for such a procedure
where grids are concerned, and who know lots more about this than I do.
All I can say is that I personally would hesitate in abandoning the grid
because it doesn't eliminate the need to ask your respondent what s/he
thinks.
>This problem, that the specific instances that you sample, with some
>purpose in mind, always comes bundled with a lot of particular features
>which are not what you're after, is a special case of the general research
>design problem of confounding with extraneous variables. In most kinds of
>research, it's dealt with by having samples big enough so that all these
>particular but irrelevant characteristics ("error variance") tend to cancel
>out. In rep grid work it couold in principle be dealt with, presumbly, by
>having gigantic grid, so that each _kind_ of element that you'd be
>interested in would be represented by a lot of _particular_ elements - but
>presumably that is just not practicable.
"In principle": fine! Is this qnother instance of the positivist belief
that research is a process in which we chip away at the bedrock of
existence in order to construct, some day, the grand structure of
independent, dependent, and intervening variables which will result in
perfect prediction. And why not?
In practice, though, _I'm_ stuck with what I've got, (the way _I_
construe this whole venture) which is the idea expressed in the notion of
constructive alternativism: that one of the "intervening variables" in
any explanation is bound to be the particular view taken by each of the
people being studied; each one of whom is guaranteed to import variance
to the most perfect explanatory structure the Grand Final Positivist
Explanation can provide, by stepping into my shoes as investigator and
choosing to construe things differently...
And so I'm left with the constructivist outcome, that the whole matter
reduces to a negotiation over meaning between the investigator and the
person being investigated, with neither of them having any greater status
than the other in what constitutes the "right" answer. And in that sense,
I'm confined to the understanding of _specific_ situations, rather than
the _explanation_ of all situations in that class. I have to negotiate a
new theory for every investigation in which I'm involved.
How to cope? Well, personally, I can make useful progress with the sorts
of organizational-psychology question with which I deal, by thinking in
terms of "issues" as construed by stakeholders, rather than absolute
"variables" as construed by the scientific investigator.
I also see myself as investigating the _content_ of what people have to
say (my understanding always open to correction by the person I'm
studying), rather than being engaged in an effort to partition variance
across an independent explanatory structure of variables.
That's why I won't ever make any contribution to (positivist) theory
building in principle, (and why publication in such media as JOOP is not
for me in practice!)... Accepting the notion of constructive
alternativism, though, I accept that if you construe your mission
differently, you should go for it!
Kindest regards,
Devi
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