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PERSONAL CONSTRUCT PSYCHOLOGY AND THE
RESEARCH INTERVIEW: THE EXAMPLE OF MENTAL TOUGHNESS IN SPORT
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Daniel
F. Gucciardi and Sandy Gordon |
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School of Sport Science, Exercise, & Health, The
University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia
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Abstract
Personal
construct psychology (PCP; Kelly, 1955/1991) offers researchers and
practitioners several useful methodologies for eliciting the personal
constructs of individuals. However, there has been a tendency in the PCP
literature to become reliant on traditional construct elicitation procedures
such as triadic and dyadic sorting as well as laddering interviews. The power
of PCP in guiding the design of a retrospective interview protocol for research
purposes, in particular, has not featured strongly. We address this issue in
this paper by describing a case example of how we have employed PCP to design an
interview protocol for examining the phenomenon of mental toughness in sport. Evidence
demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed methodology is described and
suggestions for future research are offered.
Keywords: research interview; construct elicitation; content; structure;
organisation |
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In its 50 year history, personal construct
psychology (PCP; Kelly,
1955/1991) has successfully
informed research and practice in a variety of academic disciplines such as nursing (Costigan,
Ellis, & Watkinson, 2003), education (Pope & Denicolo, 2001), forensics (Horley, 2003), politics (Stojnov, 2003), and psychotherapy (Winter
& Viney, 2005). The repertory grid is the key tool of
PCP and the technique most frequently employed to explore personal construing
in both professional and academic settings. In fact, over the last 50 years it
has flourished to an extent where it has become synonymous with PCP. There are
other, less prominent techniques (e.g., laddering, pyramiding, self-characterization
sketches) that are used by personal construct practitioners and researchers to
explore personal construing (Denicolo, 2003; Fransella, 2003). Little attention
has been devoted in the PCP literature, however, to examining the effectiveness
of a PCP interview methodology as a research tool.
In this manuscript we address this
overlooked issue by describing a case example of how we have used PCP to design
a retrospective interview protocol containing several open-ended questions for
examining mental toughness in Australian football. As we were unable to provide
a detailed overview of how we designed the PCP interview protocol previously
(Gucciardi, Gordon, & Dimmock, in press), the primary objective here is to
describe the process involved in generating the open-ended questions. A brief
discussion of the findings is presented to support the usefulness of this interview
methodology; however, the interested reader should consult our previous
manuscript for a detailed discussion of the findings (Gucciardi et al., in
press). In so doing, we hope to stimulate ideas about how PCP can be employed
to develop an interview protocol for any line of psychological inquiry. After providing
a brief discussion of the background to the present study, we next detail our
thinking behind the development of the interview questions. Following this, we discuss
some of the findings from our own and others’ (Chambers, 2008; Savage, 2006)
research using our interview protocol described here. We conclude by offering
some suggestions for future research.
BACKGROUND
TO THE STUDY
Mental toughness in sport is a relatively
new and growing area of sport psychology research, having caught the
imagination of both the general sporting public and the academic community. In
fact, there are currently only a handful of peer-reviewed studies which have
examined this psychological construct (Bull, Shambrook, James, & Brooks, 2005;
Fourie & Potgieter, 2001; Jones, Hanton, & Connaughton, 2002, 2007;
Thelwell, Weston, & Greenlees, 2005). Although
impressive and providing some insight into the complexity of this phenomenon,
research on this apparently desirable construct has been inadequate as it has
focused only on describing the key characteristics and outcomes of mental
toughness (Gordon, Gucciardi, & Chambers, 2007). To enable both conceptual
and applied advancements, more research was needed to better understand both
mental toughness outcomes and processes. For example, research has failed to
understand when these characteristics are required, what they enable a mentally
tough athlete to do, and what overt behaviours mentally tough athletes
characteristically exhibit (Gucciardi & Gordon, 2007).
Given the atheoretical nature of previous
research in the area (Gordon et al., 2007), our approach was to adopt a
theoretical framework in which an individual’s views, experiences, meanings,
and perceptions can be articulated and understood to allow for a more
comprehensive examination of the mental toughness phenomenon. Accordingly, we
were interested in adopting a theoretical framework that could facilitate our
attempt to gain a deeper understanding of the pertinent issues described
previously as well as providing a theoretical lens with which to interpret the
data. The primary objective of our research, therefore, was to explore the
content as well as the structure and organisation of mental toughness within an
Australian football context. The interview protocol illustrated in Table 1 and described
hereafter aimed to facilitate this process.
Table 1. Gucciardi et al.’s (in press) PCP interview protocol.
Q1. Please describe for me what you
consider “mental toughness” to be in football. Can you offer a definition,
phrase or quote to describe it?
Q2. What do you think are the contexts
which require a footballer to be mentally tough and those contexts which do
not? (situations)
Q3. What do you believe distinguishes
mentally tough footballers from those footballers who are not mentally tough?
(people)
Q4. What do you consider to be the contrast
of each of these characteristics? (dichotomy
corollary)
Q5. In your opinion, what do you consider
to be the role(s) or purpose(s) of each of these characteristics? (behaviours)
Q6. Please rank these characteristics,
according to what you believe, in order of importance for mental toughness in
football. (organisation corollary)
Q7. Please list and describe those contexts
to which you believe each of these characteristics are useful and those
contexts in which they are not useful. (range
corollary)
Q8. I want you to put yourself in your
[other person] shoes and describe for me what you believe s/he would consider
mental toughness in football to be? (sociality
corollary) |
Note: The relevant PCP principle is italicised in parentheses
. DESIGNING
THE PCP INTERVIEW
In designing the interview protocol we were
concerned with how we could use several of the 11 corollaries, other established
methodologies of a personal construct enquiry (e.g., the repertory grid), and
information regarding Kelly’s (1955/1991) clinical work to design open-ended
questions for construct elicitation. Perhaps the most salient feature that we
drew from Kelly’s clinical work was his emphasis on adopting a credulous approach toward everything the
interviewee mentions (Fransella, 2003; Kelly, 1955/1991). Specifically, the
interviewer must not disregard any of the interviewee’s discourse because it
does not conform to his or her own or others thinking, or is even inconsistent
with what previous research has revealed. The endeavour, rather, is to see the
interviewee’s world through his or her eyes. Kelly highlighted that whilst the
credulous approach should encourage the interviewer to respect what the
interviewee is saying they must not be misled by that individual’s
idiosyncrasies. In essence, the interviewer needs to perform a “balancing act”
throughout an interview to ensure that they do not disregard anything that is
mentioned by the individual because of any preconceptions they may have, whilst
at the same time maintaining some level of objectivity about the interviewee’s
discourse. In other words, the interviewer needs to subsume the interviewee’s
construing without being captured by it (Fransella, 2003).
The credulous approach is evident in our
interview schedule from the outset (i.e., asking the interviewee about his or
her perception of mental toughness) and is maintained throughout by directly
asking each interviewee for his or her opinions and thoughts in each question.
By directly asking the interviewee for his or her opinions and thoughts in each
question of the interview (e.g., what do you
believe…, how do you…, etc) the
interviewer is also encouraged to maintain some level of objectivity, as they
are constantly reminded of the idiosyncratic nature of those comments whilst
recognising it as one valid formulation of events. Put simply, although those
statements are useful for that individual they may not necessarily be useful
for another individual, as they only represent that individual’s construing.
Particular contexts and people are
the most frequently employed elements in PCP research that utilises the
repertory grid technique (Fransella, Bell, & Bannister, 2004; Jankowicz,
2004). This is not surprising given that Kelly (1955/1991; 2003) highlighted in
the experience cycle, which is based
on the experience corollary, the
central role that the contexts or events of our lives play in the development and
modification of personal constructs. This is due to our drive to make sense of
human behaviour by interpreting it within the context in which it occurs. Because
we are in constant and continual engagement with the external world we are
encouraged to actively seek out, describe and evaluate the phenomena we
experience in an attempt to anticipate and predict what will occur in the
future (Kelly, 1955/1991). Indeed, certain people and contexts are prominent
events that we consistently encounter on a daily basis throughout our lives. In
using this tenet, we asked interviewees to identify those contexts which do and
do not require mental toughness. An important implication of such a question
for exploring each interviewee’s personal construing and gaining an understanding
of mental toughness is that the interviewee is being placed in a better
position to consider it by placing themselves in these contexts based on one’s
personal experiences to identify the salient features of those experiences.
Importantly, this also ensures that the information explicated by the
interviewee is more specific and relates to the particular behaviours
associated with mental toughness.
People are also another important element in
the repertory grid technique. As with most things in life, there will always be
individuals who are perceived as being high in a construct and those who are
not, and individuals will import characteristics of these individuals from
encounters with them. We attempted to reveal a deeper understanding of mental
toughness by asking individuals about the characteristics (and their contrasts)
that distinguish mentally tough individuals with individuals who are not. As
explicated by the construction corollary,
it is those regularities and inconsistencies of certain events (i.e., contexts
and people) that represent characteristics that encourage the development of
construct(s) pertaining to a certain phenomenon (Kelly, 1955/1991), and the endeavour
of the interviewer is to gain access to these constructions. The dichotomy corollary extends this notion
by asserting that these similarities and inconsistencies form references axes
or constructs (Kelly, 1955/1991) where there is a personally relevant (emergent)
pole and a contrasting pole that implies some distinction (contrast pole).
Thus, there was the need to establish each interviewee’s constructions in terms
of bipolar constructs, as it is only in the context of the opposite pole that
we can begin to understand the true meaning of that construct (Kelly, 1955/1991).
The construct solution-focused coping
vs. problem-focused coping, for example, can represent a completely
different set of characteristics and behaviours when compared with the
construct solution-focused coping vs.
emotion-focused coping.
Kelly (1955/1991) originally introduced two
methods for eliciting bipolar, personal constructs. The difference method,
which requires that the interviewee express how the third element in a triad
differs from two others, is the most commonly employed technique in repertory
grid research (Neimeyer, Bowman, & Saferstein, 2005). In contrast, the opposite
method requires that the interviewee express the opposite for the similarity
pole of the construct. Repertory grid research shows that the difference method
is effective in producing higher levels of differentiated personal construing,
but produces a greater number of ‘bent’ (i.e., nonantonymous, orthogonal)
constructs, whereas the opposite method involves an instructional set that is
less complex and enhances bipolarity, but produces lower levels of
differentiated personal construing through the generation of extreme, negative
contrast poles (Hagans, Neimeyer, & Goodholm, 2000; Neimeyer, Neimeyer,
Hagans, & Van Brunt, 2002). Noting these advantages and disadvantages, Neimeyer
et al. (2005) recently developed and tested a new method of personal construct
elicitation, called the contrast method, which was shown to avoid construct
negativity and the generation of bent constructs, whilst generating higher
levels of personal construct differentiation through a relatively
straightforward instructional set. The contrast method instructs individuals as
follows: “To you, being [emergent pole] would contrast with someone who is…” (Neimeyer
et al., 2005, p. 244).
Although these methods have been developed
and evaluated for repertory grid usage we considered each as possible
techniques for eliciting bipolar, personal constructs in a PCP guided interview.
Our preference here was the contrast method (see Table 1, Q4). Obviously, we cannot
make any judgments as to which of these three or any other methods for that
matter may be more effective than any other method for eliciting bipolar
constructs in an open-ended interview format. The important issue is that researchers
explicitly attempt to identify both the emergent and contrast poles of a
construct, as PCP emphasises that we cannot fully understand what the emergent
pole of a construct is without gaining a sense of the contrast pole of that
construct. It is in this context that we can gain a more accurate understanding
of what these characteristics mean for that individual’s own construct and any
subsequent behaviour. From a conceptual standpoint, identifying the contrast
pole of a construct enabled us to arrive at a more accurate understanding of mental
toughness by conceptualising mental toughness in the context of what it is not.
This was a notable limitation of previous research on mental toughness.
Now that we had gauged each interviewee’s
personal constructs regarding mental toughness in the contexts that require mental
toughness, our focus turned to the understanding these constructs in more
detail. First, it is simply not enough to only identify what constructs an
individual holds about mental toughness; we need to identify what behaviours
the individual infers from these constructs. There are many ways in which
questions can be posed to identify pertinent behaviours, but we chose to ask
the interviewees what they believe is the purpose or role of the construct. One
alternative that we considered was simply asking the interviewee what it is
that individuals do in those contexts that require the phenomenon of interest
(e.g., “what do you believe are the behaviours
those individuals who become self-focused in [situation] commonly display”). By
gaining an understanding of the behaviours an individual ascribes to a
particular construct we gained further information that enabled us to understand
the idiosyncratic anticipations and interpretations that an individual
maintains about mental toughness.
The organisation
corollary also needs to be considered when trying to understand the
meanings people ascribe to a psychological phenomenon. According to this
corollary, constructs are organised into a hierarchical system with some
constructs being more personally important (superordinate) than others
(subordinate; Kelly, 1955/1991). The purpose of this hierarchical organisation
is to reduce the chaos of the external world and provide the individual with
clear avenues of inference and movement. Accordingly, people do not only differ
in their interpretations of events but also in the importance they place on
certain constructs within their system. Essentially then, we aimed to
understand the relationships between the constructs identified as keys to mental
toughness. By asking the interviewee to rank the constructs in order of
importance we identified preliminary information about the organisation of
their superordinate and subordinate constructs. We also sought to strengthen this
understanding by establishing the permeability of each of these constructs by
asking the interviewees to list all the situations for which each construct is
useful and not useful for, as guided by the range
corollary. A construct will only account for the anticipations known to that
individual and when a construct has a higher range of convenience (a greater
perceived utility) more inferences can be made allowing it to be applied to a
greater variety of events (Kelly, 1955/1991). The implication is that a
construct with a higher range of convenience should be considered more
superordinate than a construct which has a lower range of convenience.
When a psychological phenomenon involves
more than one individual assumptions about similarity of construing (commonality corollary) and trying to
understand others’ construing (sociality
corollary) become appropriate, as groups of individuals may share their
ways of construing. As implied by the sociality corollary, understanding
others’ views better equips an individual to extend their own personal
construct system (Kelly, 1955/1991). With this corollary in mind, we asked
interviewees to take the place of another individual and describe the
characteristics and the roles of these characteristics that they believe this
individual would consider pertinent to mental toughness. By taking the
perspective of another individual the interviewee can be encouraged to go
beyond his or her idiosyncrasies and further explore and consider how another
individual may conceptualise mental toughness. The endeavour, therefore, was to
encourage the interviewee to take a fresh look at events so that we could gain
a more explicit and in-depth understanding about mental toughness from that
individual.
OVERVIEW
OF THE METHODS AND RESULTS
The usefulness of the aforementioned
interview methodology can only be supported when there is evidence to indicate
that it allows for the accruement of quality descriptions and explanation, and
is equivalent or superior to similar methods of construct elicitation (Savage,
2006). In designing this interview, we were interested in alleviating some of
the concerns of previous research by gaining an understanding of what mental
toughness is in the context of what it is not, when mental toughness is and is
not required, what mental toughness enables one to in such situations, and the
behaviours characteristic of mentally tough footballers (cf. Gucciardi &
Gordon, 2007).
Methods
In our study (Gucciardi et al., in press),
11 Australian football coaches (Mage
= 42, SD = 9.62), all of whom had
extensive playing and coaching experience at the highest level, were
interviewed using the interview schedule displayed in Table 1. Interviews were
semi-structured in that conversations with each participant were guided by the questions
listed in Table 1. Although each interview began with Q1 and ended with Q8,
conversations were not constrained by the interview guide so as to allow new
questions or discussion points as a result of each participant’s discourse. Both
clarification (“What do you mean by…?”) and elaboration probes (“Can you give
me an example of…?”) were used throughout each interview to both prompt
interviewees in such circumstances and encourage clarity and richness of data. Participants
were sent a copy of the interview schedule at least three days prior to their
interview and were asked to reflect on these questions.
The initial conceptualisation of mental
toughness generated from these 11 interviews was then presented to two independent
coaching cohorts at a national (n =
58; Gordon & Gucciardi, 2006a) and state coaching conference (n = 49; Gordon & Gucciardi, 2006b). Participants
were provided with a detailed account of the key components of the emerging
theoretical model during a two-hour workshop. The primary purpose of these
workshops was to establish if the conceptualisation of mental toughness
generated from the initial interviews reflected the personal constructions of
mental toughness held by a larger and more representative group of coaches
(i.e., experience, coaching level). Both coaching groups agreed with the key
characteristics, situations, and behaviours described in the initial
conceptualisation; however, several other situations were included in the final
model of mental toughness presented in Figure 1.
Data
Analysis
To address calls in the
qualitative methods literature for researchers to provide a theoretical
analysis for the findings (e.g., Morse, 1994), a primary purpose of this study
was to develop an explanatory model of mental toughness in Australian football.
Therefore, the transcribed verbatim data was analysed
using grounded theory analytical techniques (Glaser & Strauss, 1967;
Strauss & Corbin, 1998), the aim of which is to develop theory from data by reading (and re-reading)
a textual database and ‘discovering’” or labelling variables
(called categories, concepts and codes) and their interrelationships. Two
independent researchers performed the analysis.
Results
The resultant model of mental toughness, displayed in Figure 1, contains
three inductively-derived themes of mental toughness: characteristics,
situations, and behaviours. Here we discuss the findings of our research in
relation to the primary objective of our research, which was to explore the
content as well as the structure and organisation of mental toughness within an
Australian football context.
Figure
1: A model of mental toughness in Australian
football (adapted with permission from Gucciardi et al., in press).
Content
Overall, 32 bipolar constructs were
revealed, with one pole describing the attribute in relation to a mentally
tough footballer and the other in relation to one who is not. These attributes
were clustered into 11 key components and ranked in descending order of
importance for mental toughness in Australian football (see Figure 2). Perhaps
the most salient aspect of this data is the identification and understanding of
what individuals believe mental is not. Previous research has been limited in
that it has focused only on describing the key characteristics of mental
toughness without placing this understanding in the context of what individuals
believe mental toughness is not. Further support for the identification of
these 11 keys to mental toughness came from two independent coaching cohorts
attending a National Coaching Conference (n
= 58; Gordon & Gucciardi, 2006a) and a Level 2 Coaching Course (n = 49; Gordon & Gucciardi, 2006b).
Figure
2. The 11 keys to mental toughness in Australian
football and their contrast.
Coaches were provided with a detailed
account of the conceptualisation of mental toughness obtained previously and
were asked to reflect on their own experiences in an attempt to identify any
areas that they believed needed to be clarified or was not represented in the
model. Interestingly, there was considerable overlap between the three
conceptualisations of mental toughness and only slight changes to the original
model were made (e.g., types of situations).
Important information was also obtained
about the situations that demand mental toughness from an Australian
footballer. There was a general consensus that all aspects of being an elite
footballer required some degree of mental toughness; however, several
situations in particular were considered to require a large degree of mental
toughness, which included: injuries and injury rehabilitation; preparation for
training and competition; challenges (personal, on- and off-field); peer and
social pressures; and internal (e.g., fatigue/endurance and low in confidence) and
external pressures (e.g., environmental and playing conditions, match variables
and physical risk). It was interesting to note that the aforementioned
situations were described as demanding greater levels of mental toughness
because they required a footballer to apply a higher percentage of the key
mental toughness characteristics. In contrast, those situations demanding lower
levels of mental toughness were said to require fewer of the key mental
toughness characteristics. This data represents an important contribution to
the literature as there is no research to date that has attempted to gain an
understanding of those situations demanding mental toughness.
Data regarding the behaviours commonly
associated with mentally tough footballers complimented the information on the
key characteristics and situations demanding mental toughness. Several overt
mentally tough general (e.g., meticulous preparers, consistent performance) and
competition-specific behaviours (e.g., repeatable good performance, versatility,
superior decision-makers, do the 1%er’s) were also revealed. Unlike previous
research, which has provided general descriptions of mentally tough behaviours
in terms of the outcomes of being mentally tough, we were able to identify
behaviours evident on and off the field in relation to the situations that
demand mental toughness.
Structure and Organisation
Two questions in our interview provided information about the
structure and organisation of mental toughness. First, having interviewees rank
the key characteristics in descending order of importance provided us with
preliminary evidence about the hierarchical nature of these constructs.
Consistent with previous research (e.g., Jones et al., 2002; Thelwell et al.,
2005), self-belief was unanimously cited as the most important characteristic
in terms of mental toughness for Australian football. Further support for the
importance of the keys to mental toughness was obtained as part of our attempt
to increase the trustworthiness of the data. Coaches attending a National
Coaching Conference (Gordon & Gucciardi, 2006a) and a Level 2 Coaching
Course (Gordon & Gucciardi, 2006b) were asked to rank the keys to mental
toughness in descending order of importance. Encouragingly, a visual inspection
of the rankings of the eleven mental toughness characteristics between the two
independent coaching cohorts displayed in Figure 3 indicates considerable
overlap. Second, the usefulness of each of the 11 keys to mental toughness for
situations demanding mental toughness served to compliment the rankings data. Those
key characteristics rated as more important for mental toughness were generally
believed to be useful in dealing with a greater variety of contexts demanding
mental toughness thereby suggesting a greater range of convenience for these
constructs.
Figure
3: Comparison of the average ranking of perceived
importance of the eleven mental toughness characteristics between Level 2
(Gordon & Gucciardi, 2006b) and Level 3 coaches (Gordon & Gucciardi,
2006a).
Note: Lower average rankings
were perceived to be more important for mental toughness.
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE
Savage (2006) recently compared the constructs
produced by alternative construct elicitation procedures. Of the five
investigatory procedures chosen, three were derived directly from PCP (role
related persons as elements, event experiences as elements, and
self-characterization) and two were interview protocols (neuro-linguistic
programming and Gucciardi et al.’s [in press] PCP interview protocol). A case
study approach (n = 1) was adopted
whereby data was collected over a four-week period, with seven days between
each alternative procedure. Savage compared the ‘maps’ of mental toughness that
were obtained via each individual procedure and found that both the PCP and
interview procedures were successful in eliciting a similar amount of
constructs, suggesting that neither group of methodologies appeared to be
superior to the other in regards to the number of constructs identified. In
particular, both interview procedures were found to be adequate processes by
which to elicit constructs with both techniques comparing favourably with the
three PCP procedures. Although some amount of equivalence across procedures was
evident, Savage cautiously concluded that no one procedure provided a complete
picture of the phenomenon of mental toughness in sport.
Further evidence to support the notion that the processes and
theoretical underpinnings of the interview protocol described here allow for
the accruement of quality descriptions and explanation can be found in a recent
adaptation of the interview protocol described here. Chambers (2008) conducted
semi-structured interviews with seven national-level swimmers (six male, one
female; Mage = 26, SD = 6.22) and seven elite swim coaches
(six male, one female; Mage
= 43.43, SD = 9.52) in an attempt to
better understand the resilience phenomenon in swimming. A content analysis of
the transcribed verbatim whereby raw quotations were organised into
interpretable and meaningful themes and categories revealed three general
categories (characteristics, situations, and behaviours). Although similar
labels to those reported by Gucciardi et al. (in press) were used by Chambers
(2008), which seems to reflect the nature of the interview protocol, the
content of the categories were substantially different.
The first category, characteristics, illustrated seven core components of resilience in swimming (self-belief vs. self-doubt; bouncing back
vs. overcome; motivation vs. unmotivated; perspective vs. no perspective; knowledgeable
vs. uninformed; work ethic vs. casual; and emotional regulation vs. overtly emotional), whereas the second,
situations, highlighted the importance of several general, competition-, and
training-specific situations demanding a swimmer’s resilience (e.g., illness,
social challenges, success and failure, coach expectations). The final
category, behaviours, comprised a number of general and competition-specific
behaviours associated with demonstrating resilience in swimming (e.g.,
solution-focused, engagement, performance consistency). As one of the first
qualitative examinations of resilience within a sport setting, the findings
provided an important insight into resilience in swimming. Encouragingly,
Chambers (2008) observed several similarities with previous research on
resilience from different research contexts (e.g., academic settings, social
settings) with regard to the various resilience characteristics.
FUTURE
RESEARCH
Our own research (Gucciardi et al., in
press) and that of Savage (2006) and Chambers (2008) provides preliminary
evidence demonstrating the usefulness of using tenets of PCP to design a
retrospective research interview. Specifically, our research demonstrated the
usefulness of the PCP guided interview protocol in obtaining quality
descriptions and explanation above and beyond that which was previously
reported in the literature (see also Chambers, 2008), whereas Savage’s research
demonstrated its equivalence with other methods of construct elicitation.
However, these are only preliminary examinations and further research is
required to provide a more thorough analysis of the effectiveness of such a
methodology. Comparisons of the PCP guided interview with the more traditional
methods (e.g., repertory grid, laddering, self-characterisation), in
particular, will go some way to demonstrating if in fact a PCP guided interview
methodology is equivalent or superior to other methods of construct
elicitation. Depending on such findings, it may be that researchers consider
employing a combination of construct elicitation methods for gaining a more
complete understanding of an individual’s personal construct system (Savage,
2006) although no definitive evidence exists at present as to the effectiveness
of such combinations. Indeed, this represents an exciting avenue for further
research. Furthermore, other psychological phenomena need to be investigated to
determine the extent to which the proposed interview methodology can be generalised
to other lines of psychological inquiry.
Consideration should also be given to the modulation corollary and the fragmentation corollary when endeavouring
to understand the organisational properties of an individual’s personal
construct system. The modulation corollary postulates that some constructs are
more accommodating (i.e., permeable) of new or novel events within their range
of convenience. If an individual is not aware of these novel encounters then
novelty will be ignored and constructive revision will not take place at the
end of the experience cycle (Kelly, 1955/1991). In particular, these permeable,
superordinate constructs apply to a wide range of events in order to maintain
continuity between apparently different experiences. The result of this is that
a person’s construct system is often fragmented where his or her construing of
some experiences may appear inconsistent with his or her construing of others,
as stated by the fragmentation corollary (Kelly, 1955/1991). Therefore, the
meaning generated through the elaboration of a person’s system can be
inferentially incompatible with an existing subsystem of constructs; that is,
there is some inconsistency between different parts of the system which may
vary according to contextual information as the person interprets. For example,
elite athletes face many adversities in their sporting careers. The challenge
for these individuals then is to resolve the inconsistencies that a more
superordinate construct bears in relation to different adversities so that this
personal construct (e.g., hard work vs.
lazy) is consistent in its application across a wide range of encounters
(Kelly, 1955/1991). The influence of both these corollaries in future research
can be evidenced in questions that ask interviewees to, for example, consider
which of the constructs they have identified would prove most useful for
anticipating and dealing with a novel situation (i.e., one which they did not
identify as a context relevant for the target phenomenon previously) and those
which would not be useful.
SUMMARY
In the PCP literature, there has been a
tendency to become reliant on the traditional construct elicitation procedures
such as triadic and dyadic elicitation and laddering interviews. The power of
PCP in guiding the design of a retrospective interview protocol for research
purposes, in particular, has not featured strongly. In this paper, we have described
a case example of how we have employed several tenets of PCP to inform the design
of a retrospective interview protocol for identifying and understanding mental
toughness in Australian football. The interview methodology proposed here can
be conceptualised as a ‘bottom-up’ process whereby we have encouraged the
interviewees to explore the entire spectrum of the mental toughness phenomenon
and using specific tenets of PCP to narrow their focus to identify those
higher-level, super-ordinate constructs that seem to identify and explain a significant
portion of mental toughness.
Preliminary evidence demonstrating the
usefulness of the proposed methodology was described (Chambers, 2008; Gucciardi
et al., in press; Savage, 2006) and suggestions for future research in
determining its effectiveness in relation to the more prominent PCP methods
(e.g., repertory grid, laddering, self-characterisation) were offered. In so
doing, we hope to have offered one alternative approach to gathering
information about personal meaning as well as stimulated novel thoughts about
how PCP can guide a retrospective interview protocol for any line of
psychological inquiry. Perhaps most intriguing is the potential role that these
tenets may also play in facilitating the development of questions for a ‘prospective’
interview, whereby the interviewer is endeavouring to further explore how an
individual anticipates certain events in their life and how they actually
behave when they experience those events.
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| | | | AUTHORS’
NOTE
This manuscript is based on a presentation at
the 17th International Congress on Personal Construct Psychology
(July 16 – 20, 2007, Brisbane, Australia) and benefited greatly from
discussions with participants at this congress. The authors would like to thank
David Savage, in particular, for his informative correspondences. Support for
the writing of this manuscript was given by a Whitfeld Fellowship to the first
author.
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ABOUT THE
AUTHORS
Daniel
F. Gucciardi, PhD, is currently a Whitfeld Fellow
in the School of Sport Science, Exercise and Health at
The University of Western Australia. His doctoral research, which is driven by
a Personal Construct Psychology framework, sought to identify, understand and
develop mental toughness among Australian footballers. Daniel’s other research
interests include performance and applied sport psychology as well as positive
youth development through youth sport and physical activity. Email: daniel.gucciardi@graduate.uwa.edu.au
Sandy
Gordon, PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the School of
Sport Science, Exercise and Health at The University of Western Australia. He is a registered Sport Psychologist
in Australia, a Fellow of The Australian Psychological Society and member of its
College of Sport Psychologists and Interest Group for Coaching Psychology. In
addition to examinations of mental toughness and resilience in sport and
psycho-immunological interventions in rehabilitation from sport injuries,
Sandy’s current research and applied interested are focused on strengths-based
and appreciative coaching psychology.
Email: Sandy.Gordon@uwa.edu.au
Home Page: http://www.sseh.uwa.edu.au/about/staff/Sport_Psychology/sandy_gordon
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REFERENCE
Gucciardi, D. F., Gordon, S. (2008). Personal construct psychology and the research interview: The example of mental toughness in sport. Personal
Construct Theory & Practice, 5, 119-130, 2008
(Retrieved from http://www.pcp-net.org/journal/pctp08/gucciardi08.html)
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Received: 29 November 2007 – Accepted: 28 March 2008 –
Published: 23 December 2008
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