A brief introduction to laddering

Laddering

Laddering is an interviewing technique, introduced by Hinkle (1965), that belongs to the domain of Personal construct psychology, initiated by George Kelly (1955).

The laddering technique consists of elicitation of initial constructs from elements, followed by focusing on an elicited construct, and determining the preferred pole of this construct. When the preferred pole of this construct is established, the participant is asked for his or her reasons for this preference. A form of “Why?”, or “Why is this important to you?” type of question is commonly used. By providing a reason for the mentioned preference, a new construct gets elicited. The procedure of determining the preferred pole of the construct in question, and asking for reasons for this choice, can be repeated for the subsequently elicited constructs. In this way, sequences of constructs are elicited. These sequences are called ladders.

Ladders of constructs may converge or diverge. Therefore the result of laddering interview is a network of constructs that reflects how the interviewee construes an investigated topic.

The laddering interviewing technique has a wide area of application, psychotherapy, and marketing being the domains where this technique is used most often.

Bannister and Mair (1968) introduced a similar technique which may be used to elicit increasingly subordinate constructs by asking “In which way” type of question. As opposed to Hinkle’s laddering, which also became known as laddering up, this technique is called laddering down.

Consistent Laddering

Consistent laddering is a more current interviewing technique, extending the traditional approach to laddering. Basically it relies on laddering up, and laddering down. In addition to this, elements are rated on all elicited constructs, and subjective importance of a construct in the context of its direct successor is measured.

Consistent laddering technique also relies on several measures derived from the data collected in an interview. These data are used to calculate various measures that are to be used to guide the interviewer during an interview. Measures like error of anticipation (EA), and (im)balance of triads of constructs, may alert the interviewer to focus on certain subsets of constructs where inconsistency is found, to try to gain a deeper insight into participant’s construing. For example, if an imbalanced triad of constructs is found in the network of constructs, the interviewer may focus on these constructs, and try to gain a deeper understanding of how the participant sees the constructs in question, and how they connect to each other. In this way, a deeper understanding into participant’s construing may be gained, and some difficulties of traditional laddering, as described by Korenini (2012, 2014), may be avoided.

Consistent laddering is described in the following articles:

Korenini, B. (2012). Conducting Consistent Laddering Interviews Using CLAD. Metodoloski zvezki - Advances in Methodology and Statistics, 9(2), 155-174. http://www.stat-d.si/mz/Articles2012.html

Korenini, B. (2014). Consistent Laddering: A New Approach to Laddering Technique, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 27(4), 317-328. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10720537.2013.852074.

References

Bannister, D., & Mair, J. M. M. (1968). The evaluation of personal constructs. London: Academic.

Hinkle, D. N. (1965). The change of personal constructs from the viewpoint of a theory of construct implications. Unpublished dissertation, The Ohio State University, Columbus.

Kelly, G.A. (1955). The Psychology of Personal Constructs: Vol. 1 & 1. London: Routledge.

Korenini, B. (2012). Conducting Consistent Laddering Interviews Using CLAD. Metodoloski zvezki - Advances in Methodology and Statistics, 9(2), 155-174.

Korenini, B. (2014). Consistent Laddering: A New Approach to Laddering Technique, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 27(4), 317-328.