Zichen Guan

Lawrence Jun Zhang

Faculty of Arts and Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand

Abstract

In recent years, Q methodology has become increasingly popular in applied linguistics and language education research, as a surge of Q studies published in these two fields could be spotted especially in the past five years. Nonetheless, most of these Q studies only present the procedures of Q in a descriptive manner without discussing or justifying the theoretical underpinnings or rationale of Q in depth largely due to the word limit of journals or their empirical focuses. To date, Q still remains contentious in academia, and the debate on Q’s theoretical underpinnings and practical application are still ongoing. Therefore, there is a dire need for more articles to offer a theoretical illustration of Q and to justify several key steps during implementing Q in applied linguistics and language education, which is the primary aim of this article. In this article we elucidated the historical background of Q and its form of inference as well as the research paradigm. In addition, we also addressed some key practical issues in applying Q, including its study design, factor extraction and factor rotation. We hope that this article serves as a resource or reference to novice Q researchers in applied linguistics and TESOL as well as other related areas and contribute to the hot debate on Q.

Keywords

Q methodology, Q in applied linguistics, Q in language education, Qualiquantology, inference of abduction, Concourse Theory, factor extraction in Q, Q for TESOL