The Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) graduate program; Language, Literacy, and Culture (LLC) doctoral program; and the Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3) present a Research Methodology Talk

Q Methodology: Mapping Shared Viewpoints

Adrian Lundberg 

Malmö University, Sweden

September 9, 2025 | 3:00-4:00pm | Public Policy Building 451 | UMBC Main Campus

Campus Map

 In this talk, I introduce Q methodology as a flexible approach for studying people’s viewpoints. Q combines a structured data-collection technique (Q sorting), by-person factor analysis, and a conceptual framework to enable a systematic study of subjectivity. It fits complex and contested questions across disciplines and supports theory building, stakeholder mapping, and policy or design decisions. For doctoral projects, Q bridges qualitative and quantitative traditions, producing defensible, interpretable typologies of shared views with consensus and distinguishing statements. It works well alongside interviews for depth and follow-up surveys for prevalence, yielding actionable narratives grounded in participants’ own reasoning.

 Please RSVP by completing this form by 8 September:

Hey Retrievers! 
The Bookstore will have special hours for Move-In Weekend:

• Saturday, August 23: 10 AM – 5 PM

• Sunday, August 24: 11 AM – 4 PM, 7 PM - 11 PM

Stop by to grab all the essentials you need and kick off the semester right! 

María Célleri, Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Women’s & Sexuality Studies, will serve as our Acting Associate Director for the Fall 2025 semester.

“I’m delighted to join the Dresher Center as Interim Associate Director this semester. In a moment when the value of the humanities is being questioned in many spaces, I’m proud to support the Center’s work championing humanistic inquiry, creativity, and critical thinking. I'm most excited to continue the important work Earl Brooks has begun with Humanities Retrievers, assisting in planning scholarly and professional development programs for our humanities undergrads! Fall 2025, here we go.”

Dear Sites Users,

Remember a few months ago when Daniela from Acquia (formerly Monsido) sent that dramatic email to the entire University about renewing our license? Well, plot twist: we're not renewing. We're leaving Monsido for greener pastures.

What's Happening

After four years with a product that had four different owners (Monsido, Optimere, Civic Plus, and now Acquia), limited customization options, no meaningful grouping capabilities for large organizations like ours, and essentially no product development beyond year one, we've decided enough is enough.

We're transitioning to a new product called Silktide starting the week of August 26, 2025. Silktide might sound familiar if you've been using accessibility extensions in Chrome to find and fix errors or scan websites, and we're happy to say that their software offers the customizations and organizational features we've been asking for, plus they very graciously matched our current Monsido pricing with a substantial discount.

Timeline

Week of August 26:

• Monsido access ends
• I'll be working directly with Silktide to configure everything and migrate users/domains from Monsido - if you had access in Monsido it will persist in Silktide
• There will be a gap period with no accessibility scanning tools (I know, I know), but this will be probably less than a month total

September 2025:

• Silktide access rolls out in phases
• Division web admins get access first to help their teams get acquainted
• New protocols, training, and hopefully a wiki if I can manage it

More details coming in September once we've actually gotten into the new system.

Questions?