Structural Similarities among Significant Others and Acquaintances: Measurable?

Abstract

This study employs a variation of Kelly's Repertory grid, called the Star matrix, as a model to depict objects and structures in individual consciousness. It uses numbers as symbolic portrayals of figure representations in psychological space, and then explores whether a computation of similarity among these representations reasonably reflects the structures in mental life. Participants were 66 adolescents. Q correlation was used to measure structural similarities among significant others and acquaintances. This was compared to participants' rank-ordering of acquaintances according to perceived similarity with a significant other. Using idiographic-nomothetic methods, it was found that there was a fair convergence of the structural measure with participants' perception. Analysis of participants' essays further showed that the structural measure was meaningful to a subject when congruence was high between the Q and participants' perception. Philippine Journal of Psychology Vol.39(1) 2006