Q is a methodology to explore the distinct subjective perspectives that exist within a group. It is used increasingly across disciplines. The methodology is semi-qualitative and the data are analysed using data reduction methods to discern the existing patterns of thought. This package is the first to perform Q analysis in R, and it provides many advantages to the existing software: namely, it is fully cross-platform, the algorithms can be transparently examined, it provides results in a clearly structured and tabulated form ready for further exploration and modelling, it produces a graphical summary of the results, and it generates a more concise report of the distinguishing and consensus statements. This paper introduces the methodology and explains how to use the package, its advantages as well as its limitations. I illustrate the main functions with a dataset on value patterns about democracy.
qmethod, psych, GPArotation, FactoMineR
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For attribution, please cite this work as
Zabala, "The R Journal: qmethod: A Package to Explore Human Perspectives Using Q Methodology", The R Journal, 2015
BibTeX citation
@article{RJ-2014-032,
author = {Zabala, Aiora},
title = {The R Journal: qmethod: A Package to Explore Human Perspectives Using Q Methodology},
journal = {The R Journal},
year = {2015},
note = {https://doi.org/10.32614/RJ-2014-032},
doi = {10.32614/RJ-2014-032},
volume = {6},
issue = {2},
issn = {2073-4859},
pages = {163-173}
}