Q Methodology: A Useful Method to Study Viewpoints

Research Tips Blog

Published: Feb 14, 2026

I was once in a research meeting where everyone agreed on the problem; at least, that’s what it sounded like. “We need better privacy protections.” “We need personalization.” “We need trust.” Heads nodded… until we tried to define what any of those words meant in practice. Suddenly, we weren’t debating facts so much as worldviews. That’s the kind of moment where Q methodology can be useful.

Q methodology (often called “Q”) is designed to study subjectivity, e.g. the patterns in how people prioritize, interpret, and weigh ideas. Instead of asking participants to rate isolated items on a survey scale, Q asks them to make tradeoffs, the way people do in real life.

Here’s how it feels from a participant’s perspective:

You’re handed a stack of statements about a topic—say, “What should libraries do about AI tools?” or “What does ‘intellectual freedom’ require in a public library?” You read them, and then you sort them along a continuum from most agree to most disagree (or most important to least important), usually into a grid that forces you to choose only a few “extreme” positions.

At first, people often sort quickly, until they hit the hard part: two statements they both like, but can’t place equally high. That tension is exactly the point. Q captures not just what someone supports, but how they rank competing values.

After the sort, the researcher asks a few simple questions, “Why did you put these at the top?” “Which was hardest to place?”, and those explanations become the story behind the choices.

Then comes the twist: instead of analyzing which statements correlate, Q analysis looks for which people sorted the statements in similar ways. The results typically reveal a small set of shared perspectives – think of them as “viewpoint maps.” Not who is right, but what coherent positions exist in your community or stakeholder group.

Q is especially useful in LIS when:

  • multiple “reasonable” positions are in play,
  • the topic is values-based or contested,
  • you want to describe perspectives clearly enough that decision-makers can recognize and respond to them.

If your research question starts with “How do different groups define…?” or “What do people mean when they say…?” Q methodology can be a useful way to find out.

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