I am planning my project and first research should revolve around sport coaches' conceptualisation of well-being. As there is not much research published in the area, I feel like grounded theory would be appropriate approach and given the research question (and my personal beliefs) I'd like to utilize constructivist GT.
However, I've been thinking about creative ways to approach this and I've come across a laddering technique/repertory grid. Firstly, I was wondering if anyone could clarify the difference between laddering and repertory grid for me?
Secondly, and I guess more importantly, I understand that laddering roots in personal construct framework and I can't seem to grasp the potential connection between that and GT. Is it that personal construct is more of a general psychological framework while GT is more research/methodological framework? Can I apply both frameworks or would it be mixing of distinct methodologies, so actually inappropriate design?
I hope I make sense.
Thank you for your help.
The repertory grid is a specific set of questions for asking about a domain. It was very popular several decades ago, especially in Britain, but I have not seen much use of it in recent years. For a starting point, you can look it up in Wikipedia. Laddering generally consists of asking a series of "why" questions to get at some relationship -- so you might start by asking "Why is X related to Y?" and then probing the response to that with equivalent "why" questions.
I don't think either of these techniques is particularly well-suited to Constructivist Grounded Theory, which usually uses a semi-structured interview that is focused on the topic itself. Further, the content of that interview should evolve as you learn more about the topic. In her book, Charmaz gives a detailed example of an interview schedule.
Hello Marketa,
first of all, I would agree with David that specific techniques might be not fit for use with the GT approach. Indeed, you probably should start with the semi-structured interviews, as you're dealing with the new phenomenon. The trick comes at the stage of interview data analysis. I would suggest Krippendorff's "Content Analysis" to use a comprehensive guide. Combined with Yin's "Case Study Research" and Corbin's "Grounded Theory" it should give you a holistic view on how to attack the particular problem. Using, content analysis software i.e. NVivo, with multiple coders and good agreement coefficient (Cohen's kappa) should give rigour to your analysis outcomes.
//Kostas
I agree with the above but if you want to understand the concepts better, I also recommend reading the following article which describes these processes in use including diagrams to show how and where they have used laddering to extract and make more data meaningful in their categorizations.
Pankratz, Oleg and Loebbecke, Claudia, "PROJECT MANAGERS' PERCEPTION OF IS PROJECT SUCCESS FACTORS – A REPERTORY GRID INVESTIGATION" (2011). ECIS 2011 Proceedings. 170. https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2011/170
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