NORMATIVA INSTALACIONES DEPORTIVAS Y PARA EL

Interviews took between 45 minutes to one hour to complete. 12 out of the 21 interviews took place at the nursery from where the parent had been recruited; the remainder took place at the subject’s home. All interviews were conducted by the investigator.

The interview began with the narrative descriptions. These were ehcited by simply asking the participant to describe her child in what ever way she wanted (see interview discussion guide appendix 6.). Participants were informed that they had three minutes to do this and that they would not be interrupted or asked any questions during their descriptions. Interviews were audio taped. Accurate timing was kept by the investigator. Interaction with the chent was kept to a minimum during the descriptions.

Following the description of the child, respondents were asked to describe the last time they came into conflict with their child. This part of the interview was not timed. Respondents were prompted for when the conflict occurred, what is

was about, how long it lasted, and what they felt the child was thinking and feeling at the time of the conflict. Again this part was audio taped. After the participants had finished their description of the confhct they were asked for the final two narrative descriptions of themselves and their own mother. Identical instructions were given as were presented when being asked to describe their child. Again the interaction between researcher and participant was kept minimal.

In the next phase of the interview the repertory grid procedure was introduced to the participant. The elements to be rated were presented one at a time on

separate sheets. The task instructions were given, and an exanple of the rating procedures was presented on each page (see appendix 7. for grid rating sheets). Each element was then rated against the list of the eight supphed constructs, on a seven point scale. Participants were instructed not to miss any out.

The repertory grid procedure was followed by the Pre-school Behaviour

Checklist (PBCL). Instructions for conq)letion of the checkhst were read out to participants, and they were given the opportunity to clarify the procedure. The mothers were then left to complete the questionnaire. Once the checkhst was completed the interviewer checked to ensure ah questions had been answered.

The final questionnaire in the battery to be presented was the BDI. The inventory was introduced as: “a questionnaire that asks about your feelings over the past week.” Here again, in addition to the written instructions, instructions were also

presented verbally as recommended by the instruction manual (Beck and Steer, 1993). Last of all, demographic data was collected verbally. Respondents were thanked for their help and the interview closed.

Once the participant had completed the interview the nursery at which the child attended was contacted and asked to con^lete an identical version of the PBCL for the child. Table 4. below summarises the research procedure.

Table 4.

Summary o f Research Procedure

Procedure Order of presentation

Narrative descriptions: Describe Your Child Describe The Last Conflict Describe Your Self

Describe Your Own Mother

Ratings Grid: My Child

Ideal Child Myself as I am Now Ideal Self Self as a Child Mother Father Ideal Parent

Pre-school Child Behaviour Checklist Mother

Nursery Worker

Beck Depression Inventory

Analysis

Analysis of Free-Response Descriptions

The taped free-response descriptions were transcribed verbatim removing any identifying features. All of the transcripts were initially rated by the investigator. Following this, a random sangle comprising one third of the transcripts were ‘blind’ rated by a second individual who was unaware of the purpose of the study. Discrepancies were dealt with in conference.

The rating of the transcripts took place in the following order. First, each of the individual descriptions were read and rated solely on the information given in the individual descriptions, using the scales adapted from Blatt and Bers

(1987/1993), starting with the description of the Child, then Self, then Own Mother. Following this the whole transcript was read, including the description of the last conflict. The remaining scales were rated using information available in the transcript as a whole. The scales adapted from the AAI deal with aspects of a relationship between individuals. Furthermore, there is a directional element inched in the scales. These scales were rated as follows: when rating the

representation of the child the first three scales (loving, rejecting, involving/role reversing) were rated m the direction of the child to the parent. For exan^le, if the participating mother described her child in a way that inqjhed the child was

‘Very Loving’ towards her, a score of 9 would be given on the child rating sheet. The last scale (idealisation) was rated in the direction of the mother to the child,

so for example if the transcript implied that the mother showed ‘SUght

Idealisation’ of the child, a score of 3 would be given on the child rating sheet. Rating of the participant’s own mother were rated in a similar way; the first three scales being rated in the direction of own mother to self and the last scale rated in the direction of self to own mother. For ratings of self descriptions, the first three scales were rated in terms of the relationship with the child, for example if the mother imphed that she was ‘Moderately Rejecting’ of her child a rating of 5 would be scored on the mother’s ‘self rating sheet. The final scale: idealisation, was rated on how the participant described herself. So, if the description implied that the participant demonstrated ‘No Idealisation’ of herself a score of 1 would be entered on the ‘self score sheet. Table 5., below summarises this procedure.

Table 5.

Summary o f the Direction o f Relationship in Scoring o f Transcripts

Representations

Scales Child Self Own Mother

Loving,

Rejecting, and Involving/

Role Reversal Child -> Self Self -> Child Own Mother -> Self

Repertory Grid Analysis

Grid analysis was conducted using the FLEXIGRID 5.21 con^uter package (Tschundi, 1993). The package coniputes the means and standard deviations of each of the constructs. Next are presented computations of the distances

between each of the constructs. These are expressed as a score between zero and two; a distance of one is what would be expected by chance. A score approaching zero indicates that two elements are thought of as very similar, the further the score is from one indicates increased difference in perception of the two elements (Winter, 1992), The package performs a principle component analysis of the grid. The percentage of variance accounted for by each of the components is presented. The size of the first component can be viewed as an indication of the intensity of construing by a particular individual. Finally, by plotting the loadings of the first two components a two dimensional

representation of an individual’s representational (construct) system can be obtained.

Statistical Analysis

Data was entered onto a spreadsheet using the SPSS Data Entry Programme. Raw data from all scales was entered: PBCL totals from both mothers and criterion raters, total BDI scores, the ratings of both raters from each of the dimensions used to analyse the transcripts, and construct ratings for each element on the repertory grid. Also entered were the distances between each of the elements as calculated by FLEXIGRID 5.2, and intensity scores: the percentage

of variance explained by component one from the principle component analysis. All demographic data was added.

Before statistical analysis began, a thorough checking of the data set was conducted. The data set was scanned for missing data. All entered data was back-checked by reading from the data set and checking with the original data from the interview material and from original transcript score sheets. Following this a systematic exploration of the data took place. All interval data was checked by examining the frequencies of the data. This enabled the investigator to check that no data lay outside possible categories, an error caused by entry of incorrect numerical category labels. Following this, descriptive statistics: mean, standard deviation, maximum and minimum scores, were obtained on ah interval data. This enabled checking that data feU within the possible range for each measure or dimension used. Any corrections were made from the original questionnaires or rating sheets. FoUowing this data checking it was possible to calculate secondary data such as discrepancy scores.

As the discrepancy score is a vital component of this research a scatter plot was produced to analyse the relationship between mothers’ and criterion ratings of the PBCL. This ahowed for outliers in the correlation to be identified and removed from subsequent analysis if necessary; none were found in these data.

Ah statistical procedures were conducted using the SPSS for MS WINDOWS (release 6.0).

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