Early Career Researcher Programme - Q methodology: a quantitative and qualitative method to investigate debates

Peer-to-peer learning session - methods

Q methodology – a quantitative and qualitative method to investigate debates 

In this session you will learn about “Q methodology” – which quantitatively and qualitatively describes perspectives on a topic. It relies on data from interviewing a diverse group of people, and can be carried out online only. The session objectives are to 1) help people understand what Q method is for, 2) find out whether it is useful for their research and 3) find out what practical steps they would need to undertake it. 

Q methodology is a useful methodology for unpacking tricky debates or wicked problems, and can help a researcher characterise individual opinions into different groups, as well as reveal where there are consensus views and where debates might be intractable. See more here: https://qmethod.org/. It has been applied widely but has shown to be particularly useful for environmental problems. The first part of the session will showcase how Q methodology was applied to the debate on constructing large dams and present the results as an example of how the methodology can be useful. The second part of the session will be interactive and illustrate step by step how you could set up a Q methodology study online – from development to analysis, and which free software you could use. The final part will look at how you can analyse a dummy dataset in R programme, using Aiora Zabala’s R package. The last part will require confident use of R programme, your laptop and an installed version of the relevant R packages.  

You can attend the first part to get a flavour of Q methodology and then leave, or the first and second part to understand the workflow, or all three to get a more detailed understanding.

This training session will be run by Lucy Goodman, of the CRI and the Department of Geography