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Q Methodology in Early Childhood Education
Q Methodology has been adopted as a cross-disciplinary approach to studying subjectivity using a blend of qualitative and quantitative processes. Q Methodology was developed by William Stephenson in the mid 1930’s after gaining a Ph.D. in Physics and three years later a Ph.D. in Psychology. He set up the honors program in psychology at Oxford University in England before taking a position in psychology at the University of Chicago. After a decade in Chicago, he became a director of advertising research in New York before becoming a distinguished professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
The Q Methodology flagship journal Operant Subjectivity has been edited by professors from schools of journalism, medicine, and government and is currently edited by Amanda Wolf at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. The editorial board is comprised of professionals from NASA, biostatistics, media and communications, counseling, higher education administration, political science, engineering and science technology, and medical education to name a few.
From a research methodological perspective, many see Q Methodology as a qualitative method. For example, Q Methodology is listed on the Qual Page, a website resource for qualitative research page located at the University of Georgia. Q Methodology has been listed by Michael Quinn Patton in his Conceptual Issues in Qualitative Inquiry text as “Sites Relevant to Qualitative Inquiry and Theory” (p. 136). In what has been called the British tradition (Stainton Rogers & Stainton Rogers, 1990), the methodology has been guided by a social constuctionist approach to identify a number of stories or accounts of social phenomena and is suited to hearing “those muted voices as well as the dominant ones” (Stainton Rogers, 183). In contrast, Q Methodology’s use of factor analysis as a technique for data reduction has been reason enough for some people to place it squarely in the quantitative domain. Past writers have noted the mixed method nature of Q Methodology (Brown, 1996; Ernest, 2001; Sexton, Snyder, Wadsworth, Jardine, & Ernest, 1998) and with the increased awareness of mixed methods as a research approach, we have seen chapters included in discipline-oriented and recent research oriented texts (e.g., Linn, Howard, & Miller, 2004; Smith, 2001; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2010).
Link to a copy of the handout for an invited presentation at the ACEI international organization
Link to a copy of an article about Q Methodology and developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood education
Link to the official Q Method WWW homepage
- Short animated overview of Q method - Q Method Video on Youtube
- Link to a page where you can set up a q-sort online - Q Sort online
- How Q Methodology differs from Q sorts and other factor analytic methods
- Denzine article
- Article differentiating between Q as a methodology vs. Q as a factor analysis technique and Q as a sorting technique
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