The hierarchical value map,the main output from a laddering analysis,is a characterisation of a group of respondents.There are two possible views,one modest,one ambitious,of hierarchical value maps.The modest view is that a hierarchical value map is a device that shows the major results from a laddering study of a group of respondents without having to go through all the individual ladders.The more ambitious view is that the hierarchical value map is an estimate of cognitive structure for that group of respondents.While the laddering literature does not take a clear stand on which view one should adopt,the more ambitious view would be in line with much previous research on estimating cognitive structures,especially within the word association paradigm (Deese,1965;Szalay & Deese,1978).The argument for the more ambitious view runs as follows:at the individual level,our data are not rich enough to estimate a respondent’s cognitive structure.In a laddering study,the 2-3 ladders typically obtained from an individual respondent reveal some aspects of his/her cognitive structure,but they are not an estimate of the cognitive structure itself,because the cognitive structure itself is not a collection of single chains,but an interrelated net of associations.However,when we obtain ladders from a group of homogeneous respondents,then the set of laddersobtained from them,taken together and analysed by an appropriate algorithm,will yield an estimate of this group’s cognitive structure.