A PROPOSAL FOR A COMMON DATA EXCHANGE FORMAT FOR REPERTORY GRID DATA

Repertory grid interviews provide information about the psychological space of people in matrix-structured form, providing a basis for the statistical analysis of results. Today there are many software packages available for the elicitation and analysis of repertory grids, most of them with unique features. But access to this wealth of options is restricted because, at present, repertory grid programs store data in different formats. As a result, anyone who has tried to exchange data between programs knows that this is not an easy task, as the exchange typically requires tedious and error-prone reentering of the data. To enable direct and error-free data exchange between repertory grid programs, we propose a common data format for repertory grid software based on the Extended Markup Language (XML). It is important to note that users do not have to learn XML to take advantage of this common data format. Data sets of current analysis programs can be translated into XML by utilities. As a basis for further discussion we have developed sample applications and utilities that are based on this new data format.