Constructivism Methodology Research Paper

More specifically, a research method might be classified as constructivist or social constructionist to the extent that it (a) elucidates ‘local’ as opposed to ‘universal’ meanings and practices, (b) focuses upon provisional rather than ‘essential’ patterns of meaning construction, (c) considers knowledge to be the production of social and personal processes of meaning-making, and (d) is more concerned with the viability or pragmatic utility of its application than with its validity per se. This emphasis on local, provisional, and pragmatic assessment of (inter)personal meanings can be illustrated by a closer consideration of three core techniques associated with a constructivist or social constructionist approach, each of which en-compasses many different variations. These include repertory grid technique, analysis of narrative processes in spoken or written ‘text,’ and discourse analysis.

1. Repertory Grid Technique

Developed within personal construct theory, the repertory grid technique represents a widely used method for studying personal and interpersonal systems of meaning. Because of their flexibility, repertory grids (or repgrids) have been used in literally thousands of studies of a broad variety of topics, ranging from children’s understandings of physical science principles and consumer preferences to formal structures of self-reflection within cognitive science and the mutual validation of belief systems between friends. However, their most consistent area of application has probably been in the clinical domain, where grids have been used to assess the meaning systems of clients in psychotherapy, and how these change over the course of treatment. The ‘reptest’ was initially designed by George Kelly, the author of personal construct psychology, as a means of assessing the content and structure of an individual’s repertory of role constructs—the unique system of interconnected meanings that define his or her perceived relationships to others.

In its simplest form, the reptest requires the respondent to compare and contrast successive sets of three significant people (e.g., my mother, my father, and myself), and formulate some important way in which two of the figures are alike, and different from the third. For example, if prompted with the above triad, a person might respond, ‘Well, my father and I are very self-reliant, whereas my mother is very dependent on others.’ This basic dimension, self-reliant s. dependent, would then be considered one of the significant themes or constructs that the person uses to organize, interpret, and approach the social world, and to define his or her role in it. By presenting the respondent with a large number of triads of varying ‘elements’ (e.g., a previous romantic partner, best friend, a disliked person, one’s ideal self), the reptest elicits a broad sampling of the personal constructs that constitute the person’s outlook on life and perceived alternatives. These constructs can then be interpreted impressionistically, used as the basis for further interviewing of the respondent, or coded using any of a number of reliable systems of content analysis, conducted either manually or using available computer programs.

Although the analysis of construct content is often revealing, most contemporary users prefer to extend the method beyond the simple elicitation of constructs by prompting the respondent subsequently to rate or rank each of the elements (e.g., people) on the resulting construct dimensions. For example, a respondent might generate a set of 15 constructs, on which 10 important elements (e.g., my mother, father, self, partner) could be rated, yielding a matrix of 150 specific ratings that would then be amenable to a wide range of analyses. Although the repgrid was originally devised as an interview-based or paper-and-pencil measure, most contemporary users rely on any of a number of computer programs for their elicitation and analysis, such as the popular WebGrid III program available via the Internet.

Although analysis of the grid can focus on simple element ratings (e.g., observing that the respondent views herself as self-reliant, hard-working, emotionally controlled, etc. on a sample of her personal constructs), it is typically more helpful to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the grid to discern larger patterns. This might involve correlating and factor analyzing the matrix of ratings to see at a glance which constructs ‘go together’ for the respondent (e.g., self-reliance is associated with being psychologically healthy, whereas dependence implies weakness), or to learn what people are most and least alike in the respondent’s view. These linkages among constructs often suggest why people remain ‘stuck’ in symptomatic patterns, as when a client resists reconstruing himself as happy instead of depressed, because the former is associated with being superficial as opposed to deep. Similarly, patterns of identification among elements in a grid can be clinically informative, with some of these (e.g., degree of correlation between actual self and ideal self) providing useful indices of progress in psycho- therapy.

At the most general level, grids can be useful for identifying how ‘tightly’ or ‘loosely’ a given person’s meaning system is organized, as revealed, for example, by the average degree of correlation among the constructs that comprise it. Like most constructivist methods, repgrids focus on personal or local (e.g., family) systems of meaning, with no assumption that these generalize to other people. Moreover, repgrids measure construct systems at a particular moment in time, demonstrating meaningful sensitivity to variation across education and psychotherapy, rather than presuming to reflect invariant psychological essences. Finally, most users of repertory grids consider the ultimate hallmark of their value to be the degree to which they prompt relevant insights for the respondents who complete them, although some investigators have also demonstrated their validity and reliability in more conventional terms. Assessment methods having some affinity to the grid technique include the laddering technique, which elicits the higher-order value implications of the respondent’s constructs of behaviors and social roles, and the self-confrontation method, which evaluates an individual’s sense of agency and communion with others through an analysis of important life events. A common feature of these methods is their focus on personal structure, viewing meaning in systemic terms that can be depicted visually to enhance its comprehension and discussion by research participants.

2. Narrative Analysis

Narrative psychology considers thinking processes to be guided by the structures and elements of which stories are composed. Instead of viewing logic as the guiding force behind information processing and meaning making, narrative psychologists view people as organizing life events into plot structures and creating themes that give them significance. This model of organization can be classified as constructivist due to the agentic, creative processes involved in the formation of narratives.

Individuals create stories to help them comprehend and communicate their experiences and interactions in the world. Narratives are generated through the use of language, common scripts, and symbols derived from different cultures and traditions, and therefore are necessarily context dependent. Stories produced are seen as reflecting truths unique to their individual authors and contexts and as rooted within distinctive lived histories.

The narrative perspective has become popular only over the last 20 years, but has grown rapidly into a movement in psychology, partly due to its broad relevance across cognitive, developmental, and clinical areas of research. In the cognitive domain, investigators have demonstrated that people inherently organize ambiguous experiences using story schemas, and have studied the way that narrative formation structures memory as well as perception of events. Developmental researchers have traced the emergence of children’s story-telling competencies, and their progressive shift toward accounting for the perspective of listener vs. narrator. In the domain of psycho-therapy, researchers have developed methods for mapping the topical and thematic shifts that characterize client accounts of their experience, relating these to good and poor outcome. The Narrative Process Coding and System illustrates the use of constructivist methods to identify and characterize narratives from transcribed psychotherapy sessions.

First, an investigator using the system segments the session dialogue into topic units that are identified through shifts in protagonists and themes. For in-stance, a client may begin a session discussing a conflict she is having with a colleague and then shift to examining a marital issue. The identification of topic segments can allow researchers to consider how themes are maintained or changed through discussion and how the interpersonal psychotherapeutic process can act to facilitate narrative development. Second, the researcher codes these topic segments into one of three narrative processes. External narrative sequences are dominated by event description. The recounting of the steps entailed in registering for university would be an example of this narrative sequence type. Internal narrative sequences focus upon emotional and experiential states. For instance, a portrayal of the different feelings present on the first day of classes would exemplify this narrative process. Finally, reflexive narrative sequences entail analysis and interpretation of events and internal reactions in order to understand their significance. An exploration of the meaning of attaining a higher education would be classified as reflexive. Within different psychotherapy orientations, research has suggested specific patterns of narrative process associated with positive outcome. For instance, a shift between internal and reflexive exploration has been associated with successful humanistic psychotherapy.

Like other methods, whether or not the narrative process coding system is ‘constructivist’ depends on the epistemic intent that guides its use. For example, the system can be used within an objective, experimental model of science to compare the distribution of narrative sequences within different transcripts. Within such a model, results can be tabulated and statistical arguments for generalization of findings can be developed that aspire toward more universal implications. Although useful in some respects, such an application departs from the emphasis on individuality that characterizes most constructivist re-search. Alternately, this narrative tool can be used in a discovery-oriented framework, and themes identified that represent local, provisional truths. For instance, dominant narrative themes could be identified within the discourse of women with eating disorders on the topics of food and body image, and these themes could be explored in relation to the lives of these individual women and their social contexts.

Other narrative coding methods include the identification of core conflictual relationship themes implicit in client accounts of problems with other people, and the coding of interviews to establish the degree to which the narrator experiences him or herself as an origin or pawn in connection with important events. In each case, the epistemic framework within which findings are presented and interpreted will dictate whether or not a method is being used in a constructivist spirit.

3. Discourse Analysis

Whereas constructivist methods tend to focus on the meaning-making efforts of individuals, families, and small groups, social constructionist methods shift attention to the broader systems of ‘languaging’ that characterize public speech, disciplinary discourse, or cultural contexts. Even when applied to individual language users, such methods tend to have a critical thrust, such as when careful ‘deconstructive listening’ is used to bring to light the hidden assumptions that constrain a speaker’s view of what positions are permissible for self or others. Social constructionist methods are in this sense more radical than constructivist methods, attempting to uproot oppressive and marginalizing forms of thinking and speaking that have dehumanizing consequences.

An example of social constructionist methods is provided by discourse analysis, the critical evaluation of social ‘texts’ to reveal their concealed constraints and contradictions. For example, analyses of published debates in the South African parliament in the early 1980s have elucidated the shared assumptions about the superiority of whites held by both liberal and conservative MPs. Likewise, feminist discourse of the 1970s has been ‘deconstructed’ to expose the ways in which ‘butch femme’ lesbians were marginalized to support a politic that advocated lesbian androgyny. Interestingly, discourse analysts have been especially active in undermining traditional assumptions in psychology, such as the largely unexamined convictions that people ideally function as rational ‘selves’ and that psychotherapy involves a move toward greater ‘reality contact.’ As a method, discourse analysis appears to be more an art than a science, borrowing from deconstructive and critical literary theory in order to understand and resist ‘dominant narratives’ that limit the terms of debate or the permissible range of human variation that is considered ‘normal.’ It is therefore sometimes used by psychotherapists concerned with helping clients free themselves from the oppressive narratives of their lives, and recover a sense of themselves as the authors of their experience. Related social constructionist methods include the analysis of rhetoric, the tropes or moves used to advance a persuasive argument, and textual analysis, which reveals the way in which authors skillfully position themselves and others within the moral discourse of an account, so as to present themselves to best advantage.

In summary, constructivist and social constructionist methods in psychology are multifaceted in form and diverse in application, but tend to express a shared commitment to revealing the structure of personal and collective meanings and the processes by which they are constructed. Given their convergence with post-modern trends in the human sciences, it is likely that their influence will continue to grow in the future.

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