Ten Pillars of Q-Methodological Wisdom

Abstract

This article derives from the first of two “keynote” presentations by William Stephenson to the first Summer Institute for the Scientific Study of Subjectivity (effectively the first Q methodology conference, held at the School of Journalism, University of Missouri-Columbia in July 1985).  It outlines and assesses the significance of what, late in his life, William Stephenson regarded as his most important unpublished manuscripts. It affords an important means of access to Stephenson’s subjectivity, to how he regarded the different strands of his work, and to those aspects of his work he felt were incomplete and in need of revision. It demonstrates both the extraordinarily broad range of his writings and his single-minded, life-long determination to develop a science of subjectivity.