The Q methodology is apparently very useful for asking large groups of people the same question and seeing how much they agree. Thus, I am very likely to have to use it in my initial psychological study. This pleases me more than it should.
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Steven Brown | 18-Dec-08 at 2:30 pm | Permalink
The term ‘Q methodology’ is in my Google Alert, so your message popped up. So, what’s your ‘initial psychological study’ all about?
Eskoala | 19-Dec-08 at 12:30 pm | Permalink
First things first, most of the reason I mention it is because my surname is Q and I was pleased by the coincidence. Having said that, I’m trying to research beauty in music in a cross-cultural context.
What I need is to assess several people of different cultures’ aprreciation of beauty in music by questionnaire. I was looking for a way of determining how much they agree overall versus how much they agree within the cultural groups. I found some useful statistical methods in Susan C. Weller’s paper.
The reason it’s an initial study is because my field is more artificial intelligence than psychology or social science: I’m hoping to train a computer algorithm to recognise and maybe even explain beauty in music. However, we need to know if there is any cross-cultural validity to the idea first of all.
Hope that makes sense and I’m not totally barking up the wrong tree! Thanks for your interest.
Claire Q
Steven Brown | 16-Jan-09 at 12:33 pm | Permalink
Here are a few hopefully pertinent references in which Q methodology is used to examine some aspect of music. A couple of others come to mind, but I’d have to look them up. Q has also been used to examine poetry and other forms of literature, as well as aesthetics. It is limitless in its applications. There are various cross-cultural studies, but I would also have to look these up if you have interest.
Maxwell, Jennifer P. (1999). The violence of the night: The perception of trauma in a song. Operant Subjectivity, 22, 12-30.
Maxwell, Jennifer P. (1999, spring). The use of performance art and Q methodology for increasing mediator recognition of trauma and domestic violence. Mediation Quarterly, 16(3), 269-285.
Oehrle, Elizabeth (1989). Educators’ attitude to philosophies of music education: A Q study. Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, no. 100, 86-89.
Seddon, Frederick A., & O’Neill, Susan A. (2004). The application of Q-methodology to the study of criteria used by adolescents in the evaluation of their musical compositions. Musicae Scientiae: The Journal of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music, 8, 207-229.
Very unusual surname. Did you obtain this by choice (like Malcolm X) or by inheritance? By the way, I see that the Weller article is in the journal Field Methods, in which an article on Q methodology followed by an intellectual exchange is currently in press.
Steven