knitr::opts_chunk$set(collapse = TRUE, comment = "#") options(width=120) library(OpenRepGrid) settings(show.scale=FALSE, show.meta=FALSE, show.cut=30)
Personal Construct Psychology's (PCP) founder, George Kelly, proposed that it is problematic to view people as either independent or dependent because everyone is, to greater or lesser degrees, dependent upon others in life (Kelly, 1969). What Kelly felt was important was how well people disperse their dependencies across different people. Whereas young children tend to have their dependencies concentrated on a small number of people (typically parents), adults are more likely to spread their dependencies across a variety of others. Dispersing one’s dependencies is generally considered more psychologically adjusted for adults (Walker et al., 1988).
Walker et al. (1988) developed the Being Helped Grid to measure dispersion of dependency. When completing such a grid, research participants are encouraged to choose at least 10 people from these role titles:
Suggested Role Titles for Being Helped Grid:
After writing the names of their selected people on the Being Helped Grid, research participants are asked to "think of a time when you had the most problem with X. If these people had been around at that time, to whom would you have gone for help." Participants then place a tick next to each person they would seek help from for each of the problems in the grid. The problem situations used in the grid are listed below.
Problem Situations Included in Being Helped Grids:
Walker et al. (1988, p. 66) developed the Dispersion of Dependency Index (DDI) to measure the degree of dispersion of dependency in a situation-resource grid (dependency grid), i.e. the degree to which a person dispersed critical situations over resource persons. The index is a renamed adoption of the diversity index from the field of ecology where it is used to measure the diversity of species in a sample. Both are computationally identical. The index is applicable to dependency grids (e.g., situation-resource) only, i.e., all grid ratings must be $0$ or $1$.
The index is calculated as follows (Walker et al., 1988, p. 66):
$$\mathrm{DI}=\sum_{i=1}^k\left[1.0-\frac{C\left(N-n_i, \mathrm{DS}\right)}{C(N, \mathrm{DS})}\right]$$
where:
# sample grid from Walker et al. (1988), p. 67 file <- system.file("extdata", "dep_grid_walker_1988_2.xlsx" , package = "OpenRepGrid") x <- importExcel(file) x
indexDDI(x, ds = 2:5)
Bell (2001) proposed another information-theory based measure for calculating dispersion of dependency, which he called the Uncertainty Index (UI). Different from the DDI, it is a normalized measure with a value range between $0$ and $1$.
$$ UI = \frac{\log D_{tot} – (\sum_i^k D_{i} × \log D_{i} ) / D_{tot}}{\log D_{tot} – \log (D_{tot}/k)} $$
where:
# sample grid from Bell (2001, p.231) file <- system.file("extdata", "dep_grid_bell_2001.xlsx" , package = "OpenRepGrid") x <- importExcel(file) x
indexUncertainty(x)
Bell, R. C. (2001). Some new measures of the dispersion of dependency in a situation—Resource grid. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 14(3), 227–234. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720530151143566
Kelly, G. A. (1962). In whom confide: On whom depend for what. In Maher, B. (Ed.), Clinical psychology and personality: The selected papers of George Kelly, p. 189-206. New York Krieger.
Walker, B. M., Ramsey, F. L., & Bell, R. C. (1988). Dispersed and undispersed dependency. International Journal of Personal Construct Psychology, 1(1), 63–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720538808412765
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