Q -Analysis and the Theory of Social Scientific Knowledge

The purpose of this paper is to examine the following questions: are the assumptions and approach of Q-analysis sufficiently novel for it to be accepted as offering a fundamentally new and important perspective for social scientific inquiry? And, if this proposition is at least partially sustainable, are those assumptions and the perspective they define appropriate to the current practical and epistemological context of applied social science? Specifically, the author attempts to distil, from a sometimes obscure and highly technical literature, the presuppositions which are crucial with respect to the issue of defining an approach to the subject matter in terms of concepts such as structure, dynamics, and human agency. He then attempts to assess the potential of the technique for assisting in the generation of interpretations and explanations which are at once both refreshingly different and consistent with a framework of rules which reflect a theory of knowledge that is neither purely mechanical nor naively individualist in its orientation. The eventual goal of the paper, however, is to bring the discussion back down from the levels of both mathematical and epistemological abstraction to the practical issues of planning and policy guidance.