altariel | Happy birthday!

Happy 70th birthday Q methodology, the method for investigating intersubjectivity for the discerning if marginalized social scientist! It is elegant, powerful, and bloody good fun if you like that sort of thing.

Q methodology is a method of statistical analysis which is chiefly concerned with human subjectivity. A Q study aims to elicit the multiple accounts or understandings that surround a particular theme, issue, or topic, and investigate the shared nature of these accounts by revealing these patterns (factors) in an interpretable and structured manner.

Participants in a Q study are invited to consider a number of 'items' [1], and to rank them according to a matrix which indicates the extent to which they agree or disagree. These 'Q sorts' [2] are taken from a variety of respondents, and are then correlated and factor-analyzed. The resulting factors represent clusters of people who have ranked the same statements in essentially the same fashion, i.e. that have a common understanding of the topic under investigation. These factors are then interpreted in terms of commonly shared perspectives.

For good explications of Q see Brown (1980), McKeown and Thomas (1988), and Stainton Rogers (1995).

The fabled Blake's 7 fan Q study.

Notes

[1] An 'item' is a statement about the issue under study.
[2] A 'Q sort' is the full collection of items related to the topic of study; a completed Q sort is the ranked ordering of all statements as carried out by an individual respondent.

References
Brown, S.R. (1980) Political Subjectivity: Applications of Q Methodology in Political Science. New Haven: Yale University Press.
McKeown, B. and Thomas, D. (1988) Q Methodology. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Stainton Rogers, R. (1995) 'Q Methodology.' In Smith, J. A., Harré, R. and Van Langenhove, L. (Eds.) Rethinking Methods in Psychology. London: Sage.

On June 28, 1935, William Stephenson penned the following letter to the Editor of the British science journal Nature, thus initiating the development that has come to be known as Q methodology. The letter eventually appeared in the 24 August 1935 issue of Nature (p. 297).

Technique of Factor Analysis

Factor analysis is a subject upon which Prof. G. H. Thomson, Dr. Wm. Brown and others have frequently written letters to Nature. This analysis is concerned with a selected population of n individuals each of whom has been measured in m tests. The (m)(m-1)/2 intercorrelations for these m variables are subjected to either a Spearman or other factor analysis.

The technique, however, can also be inverted. We begin with a population of n different tests (or essays, pictures, traits or other measurable material), each of which is measured or scaled by m individuals. The (m)(m-1)/2 intercorrelations are then factorised in the usual way.

This inversion has interesting practical applications. It brings the factor technique from group and field work into the laboratory, and reaches into spheres of work hitherto untouched or not amendable to factorisation. It is especially valuable in experimental aesthetics and in educational psychology, no less than in pure psychology.

It allows a completely new series of studies to be made on the Spearman 'central intellective factor' (g), and also allows tests to be made of the Two Factor Theorem under greatly improved experimental conditions. Data on these and other points are to be published in due course in the British Journal of Psychology.

W. Stephenson
Psychological Laboratory,
University College,
Gower Street,
London, W.C.1.
June 28.