essential-guide-to-qualitative-in-organizational-research

––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– THE TWENTY STATEMENTS TEST –––––––––– 95Table 8.3cont.23 Emotional: changeable, moody, shows feelings, easily hurt, a worrier, nervous; (antonyms) calm, steady,relaxed [type]24 Reliable: good, decent, loyal, trustworthy, sincere, honest; (antonyms) moral self condemnations [neutral= other self statements]25 Introspective: self-critical, self-aware; (antonyms) ignorant about self, unaware of what I want(iv)Values, beliefs26 Religious: Christian, member of named religious group; (antonyms) atheist, agnostic27 Political: right-wing, liberal, radical, conservative; (antonyms) apolitical28 Ethical: humanistic, environmentalist, other value statements; (antonyms) no moral beliefs29 Psychological: statements of belief about human nature(v)Others30 Miscellaneous: habits, customs, tastes: vegetarian, nail-biter31 Expectations: planning to emigrate, get marriedidentification over one year in their work environment. As we have stated, repertory gridswere also used with these graduate entrants (Arnold and Nicholson, 1991), from which oneof the major findings was how stable their self-concept proved to be over the year, even forthose who had just entered the organization. Through the TSTs, we expected to findevidence of subtle changes in self-identity. Although the great majority of individuals werestill in the reflective mode at phase two, the percentage of B-type responses had increased. Weinterpret this as evidence of a shift, particularly amongst new recruits, towards greater stabilitywithin explicitly structured situations, often in relation to work. However, the reader has seenfrom several examples how stable self-definition remained.EVALUATION ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––The measure’s capacity to reflect the salience of facets of identity is a critical feature favouringthe TST over other instruments. The open-ended format allows individuals to determine thetype and order of response, and gives them the opportunity to define their personal constructs.This is a special advantage over conventional techniques. Another is its ability to reflect theextent to which individuals locate and evaluate themselves within the social system. Theseinternalized aspects of the self based on social relationships and role identities are largelyinaccessible to fixed response self-concept measurement. We found that 28 of the 32 women(or 88 per cent) made a statement about being ‘a woman’, ‘female’, ‘girl’, ‘career woman’, ‘abusiness woman’, or ‘an independent woman’ within their first three statements, whereas only22 of the 62 men (36 per cent) identified themselves as ‘male’ or ‘a man’ in their first fewstatements. In a technically based organization, and in these specific occupational groups,gender is of greater salience to women, but for men is more thoroughly internalized andtherefore not articulated. We do not know of any other measure that would have brought thisdifference out so clearly, because none other would offer equal scope for individuals to definetheir own identities. Apart from gender for women, occupational and family membershipcategories were highly salient for this sample of young people.