Q-sort Methodology - the systematic study of participant viewpoints in Social Research

Abstract

In social sciences research there are instruments made up of questions and that aim to ascertain opinions, behaviors and attitudes, aim to find out how the person would act in a given situation, instead of putting the person to the test. Although there are no right or wrong answers, there is a tendency to respond in a socially acceptable way, even if the answer does not correspond to reality. This problem can be circumvented through the Q-sort methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative data and analytical techniques that are not present in other methods. In this way, it consists of presenting participants with a set of statements on a given topic and asking them to classify them according to their opinion, according to a predefined distribution, which, in general, is approximately normal. This methodology forces participants to distribute the score among the items on the scale, thus avoiding the constraints associated with social desirability and the tendency to respond in the same way or always through the midpoint to different questions. Another advantage is that it provides linearity and near-normality to the scale, which makes it possible to compare subjects more easily with each other. Notwithstanding its advantages, Q-sort methodology also has negative points because forced-choice measures produce ipsative data that lead to distorted scales and problematic psychometric properties. As the data are obtained by ordering a set of items or by forcefully choosing one item over another, it is impossible to reach very high or very low values on all scales, which gives rise to a large number of negative values that, in turn, they result in an average correlation between the scales, which is also negative. In view of the above, it was considered pertinent to review the research carried out on the q-sort methodology, presenting its main advantages and disadvantages.