Q-Methodology for Environmental Discourses

Q-methodology applied to environmental discourses is a way of systematically uncovering the distinct shared viewpoints that people hold about an environmental issue, by having them rank-order a set of statements and then factor-analyzing the sortings to group people with similar perspectives. John Barry and John Proops introduced its use for sustainability research in their 1999 Ecological Economics article, arguing that Q-method offers a rigorous yet interpretive route to discovering the discourses through which people understand environmental questions. Unlike conventional surveys, which correlate variables across people, Q-method correlates people across statements, so the emergent factors are clusters of subjects who share a way of seeing the issue. Each factor represents an environmental discourse — a coherent perspective on, say, climate policy, conservation, or sustainability — defined by how its adherents prioritize the statements. The method blends the qualitative richness of discourse analysis with the analytic discipline of factor analysis, making it a favored tool for mapping the contested perspectives that animate environmental debate.