Editing Personal construct theory (section)

== The repertory grid ==
{{Main|Repertory grid}}
The repertory grid serves as part of various assessment methods to elicit and examine an individual's repertoire of personal constructs. There are different formats such as card sorts, verbally administered group format, and the [[repertory grid]] technique.{{sfn|Horley|2008|pp=58–65}}

The repertory grid itself is a [[Matrix (mathematics)|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.

To build a repertory grid for a patient, Kelly might first ask the patient to select about seven elements (although there are no fixed rules for the number of elements{{sfn|Fransella|Bell|Bannister|2004|p=27}}) whose nature might depend on whatever the patient or therapist are trying to discover.{{sfn|Fransella|Bell|Bannister|2004|p=27}} 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&nbsp;... (whatever is of interest), in which way are two of these people 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.

In the book ''Personal Construct Methodology'', researchers [[Brian R. Gaines]] and Mildred L.G. Shaw noted that they "have also found [[concept map]]ping and [[semantic network]] tools to be complementary to repertory grid tools and generally use both in most studies" but that they "see less use of network representations in PCP studies than is appropriate".<ref>Gaines & Shaw, [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.414.1037&rep=rep1&type=pdf "Computer-aided constructivism"], in {{harvnb|Caputi|Viney|Walker|Crittenden|2011|pp=183–222}}</ref> They encouraged practitioners to use semantic network techniques in addition to the repertory grid.<ref>On constructivist [[multimethodology]] see also, for example: {{harvnb|Bradshaw|Ford|Adams-Webber|Boose|1993}}</ref>

=== Organizational applications ===
PCP has always been a minority interest among psychologists. During the last 30 years, it has gradually gained adherents in the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, Australia, Ireland, Italy and Spain. While its chief fields of application remain clinical and educational psychology, there is an increasing interest in its applications to [[organizational development]], employee training and development, job analysis, job description and evaluation. The [[repertory grid]] is often used in the qualitative phase of market research, to identify the ways in which consumers construe products and services.