Applying Q-Methodology to Investigate People’ Preferences for Multivariate Stimuli

This article serves as a step-by-step guide of a new application of Q-methodology to investigate people’s preferences for multivariate stimuli. Q-methodology has been widely applied in fields such as sociology, education and political sciences but, despite its numerous advantages, it has not yet gai...

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Main Authors: Jie Gao, Alessandro Soranzo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2020-12-01
Series:Frontiers in Psychology
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.556509/full
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author Jie Gao
Alessandro Soranzo
author_facet Jie Gao
Alessandro Soranzo
author_sort Jie Gao
collection DOAJ
description This article serves as a step-by-step guide of a new application of Q-methodology to investigate people’s preferences for multivariate stimuli. Q-methodology has been widely applied in fields such as sociology, education and political sciences but, despite its numerous advantages, it has not yet gained much attention from experimental psychologists. This may be due to the fact that psychologists examining preferences, often adopt stimuli resulting from a combination of characteristics from multiple variables, and in repeated measure designs. At present, Q methodology has not been adapted to accommodate. We therefore developed a novel analysis procedure allowing Q-methodology to handle these conditions. We propose a protocol requiring five analyses of a decision process to estimate: (1) the preference of stimuli, (2) the dominance of variables, (3) the individual differences, (4) the interaction between individual differences and preference, and (5) the interaction between individual differences and dominance. The guide comes with a script developed in R (R Core Team, 2020) to run the five analyses; furthermore, we provide a case study with a detailed description of the procedure and corresponding results. This guide is particularly beneficial to conduct and analyze experiments in any research on people’s preferences, such as experimental aesthetics, prototype testing, visual perception (e.g., judgments of similarity/dissimilarity to a model), etc.
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spelling doaj.art-8078aab8327e4268b0b385b511e6333c2022-12-21T20:17:03ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782020-12-011110.3389/fpsyg.2020.556509556509Applying Q-Methodology to Investigate People’ Preferences for Multivariate StimuliJie Gao0Alessandro Soranzo1Institute of Education, University College London, London, United KingdomDepartment of Psychology, Sociology and Politics, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, United KingdomThis article serves as a step-by-step guide of a new application of Q-methodology to investigate people’s preferences for multivariate stimuli. Q-methodology has been widely applied in fields such as sociology, education and political sciences but, despite its numerous advantages, it has not yet gained much attention from experimental psychologists. This may be due to the fact that psychologists examining preferences, often adopt stimuli resulting from a combination of characteristics from multiple variables, and in repeated measure designs. At present, Q methodology has not been adapted to accommodate. We therefore developed a novel analysis procedure allowing Q-methodology to handle these conditions. We propose a protocol requiring five analyses of a decision process to estimate: (1) the preference of stimuli, (2) the dominance of variables, (3) the individual differences, (4) the interaction between individual differences and preference, and (5) the interaction between individual differences and dominance. The guide comes with a script developed in R (R Core Team, 2020) to run the five analyses; furthermore, we provide a case study with a detailed description of the procedure and corresponding results. This guide is particularly beneficial to conduct and analyze experiments in any research on people’s preferences, such as experimental aesthetics, prototype testing, visual perception (e.g., judgments of similarity/dissimilarity to a model), etc.https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.556509/fullindividual differencesdominance – rank orderspreferencerepeated measures analysesQ-methodology
spellingShingle Jie Gao
Alessandro Soranzo
Applying Q-Methodology to Investigate People’ Preferences for Multivariate Stimuli
Frontiers in Psychology
individual differences
dominance – rank orders
preference
repeated measures analyses
Q-methodology
title Applying Q-Methodology to Investigate People’ Preferences for Multivariate Stimuli
title_full Applying Q-Methodology to Investigate People’ Preferences for Multivariate Stimuli
title_fullStr Applying Q-Methodology to Investigate People’ Preferences for Multivariate Stimuli
title_full_unstemmed Applying Q-Methodology to Investigate People’ Preferences for Multivariate Stimuli
title_short Applying Q-Methodology to Investigate People’ Preferences for Multivariate Stimuli
title_sort applying q methodology to investigate people preferences for multivariate stimuli
topic individual differences
dominance – rank orders
preference
repeated measures analyses
Q-methodology
url https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.556509/full
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