written by Susan Ramlo

Q methodology was developed by PhD physicist and psychologist William Stevenson 73 years ago as a new way of investigating people's views of any topic.  Yet its application has primarily been in the fields of marketing, psychology, and political science.  Still, Q offers an opportunity for the physics education research community to determine the perspectives and consensus within a group, such as a classroom, related to topics of interest such as the nature of science and epistemology.  This paper presents the basics of using Q methodology with a classroom application as an example and subsequent comparisons of this example's results to similar studies using qualitative and survey methods.

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Published October 20, 2008
Last Modified May 22, 2009

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