This archive provides example datasets from Q methodology studies, including published research. The materials can be used for learning, teaching, and practicing Q analysis with PQ method (or another) software.

Data files are bundled and compressed in zip format. If your computer does not know how to unzip these files, you can download free software for that from Info-ZIP for your PC or Macintosh.

Lipset – Textbook example – Brown (1980)

lipset.zip – zip-Archive with PQMethod type files and two sample SPSS syntax files. The ‘Lipset’ data set is packaged already within PQMethod.

This is a quite extensively discussed text-book example.

Source: Brown, S.R. (1980). Political subjectivity: Applications of Q methodology in political science. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Knowledge or Certainty – Dissertation by Len Barchak (1977)

In his dissertation, Len Barchak (1977) studied epistemological views of leading communication scientists of the 1970s, including Paul Lazarsfeld, Denis McQuail, Hilde Himmelweit, Colin Cherry, and Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann. William Stephenson, the mentor of this study, participated also as a respondent in 1975. In 1977, and in 1984 again, Stephenson provided follow-up Q-sorts which reveal the development of his philosophy of science during that time.

Web version of published article based on Len’s dissertation

Data and additional material

  • kocdata.txt – Statements, Q-sort data, factor-loading and factor-score matrices, etc., assembled as an unformatted text file.
  • Six-Step Handrotation of Factors – 6 Figures from Barchak (1977, Appendix 8)
  • kocpqm.zip – QMethod / PQMethod 2.0 input and output files
  • koc-sty.txt – PCQ3 input file (save to c:\pcq3\studies as ‘koc.sty’)
  • kocquanl.zip – QUANAL input and output files
  • kocspss.zip – SPSSPC in/output files

Online WebQ-Sort

If you aren’t acquainted with WebQ yet, please do a practice run of the WebQ Tutor  first. Launch ‘Knowledge or Certainty’ WebQ. Note: This is for demonstration only. Your responses will not be sent to a valid email address. However, after clicking “Send,” you will see your q-sort data record, formatted for PQMethod, on screen.

Perceptions of Terrorism – Nitcavic & Dowling (1990)

The literature on terrorism makes a number of significant predictions of the effects of media coverage of terrorism on audiences, public policy, and terrorism itself. Many of these predictions are contradictory, and little or no empirical social-scientific research has been done to determine public perceptions of international terrorism. Q-methodology offers a means of identifying groups or “types” of persons who share similar attitudes toward a phenomenon. Use of Q-methology here revealed four types of respondents sharing similar views of international terrorism. These distinctive types helped shed light on the many diverse and contradictory predictions of the effects of terrorism coverage on American public opinion and public policy.

Web version of published article

Nitcavic, R. G. & Dowling, R. E. (1990). American perceptions of terrorism: A Q-methodological analysis of types. Political Communication and Persuasion, 7, 147-166. 

Data

  • terrqunl.zip – QUANAL input and output files
  • terrpqm.zip – PQMethod / QMethod in/output files
  • terrspss.zip – SPSSPC in/output files – syntax file updated for SPSS 19 (March 2012)

Original analyses were run with QUANAL software.