Personal Construct Theory - The Repertory Grid

The Repertory Grid

To build a Repertory Grid (a sort of matrix) for a patient, Kelly would first ask the patient to select about seven elements whose nature might depend on whatever the patient or therapist are trying to discover. For instance, “Two specific friends, two work-mates, two people you dislike, your mother and yourself”, or something of that sort. Then, three of the elements would be selected at random, and then the therapist would ask:"In relation to… (whatever is of interest), in which way two of these people are alike but different from the third"? The answer is sure to indicate one of the extreme points of one of the patient’s constructs. He might say for instance that Fred and Sarah are very communicative whereas John isn’t. Further questioning would reveal the other end of the construct (say, introvert) and the positions of the three characters between extremes. Repeating the procedure with different sets of three elements ends up revealing several constructs the patient might not have been fully aware of.

The Repertory Grid itself is a matrix where the rows represent constructs found, the columns represent the elements, and cells indicate with a number the position of each element within each construct. There is software available to produce several reports and graphs from these Grids.