ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to provide a guide to conducting Q research in English medium instruction (EMI). Taking a person-centred rather than variable-centred approach, Q methodology seeks to offer a holistic configuration of participants’ subjective and socially shared perspectives on complex and/or controversial issues. As such, it has been increasingly adopted to investigate subjectivities in language education, suggesting its potential for application in EMI research. However, despite its focus on complex issues and long-standing interest in subjective and socially shared perceptions, EMI research has been relatively slow to take up this approach. Hence, this chapter introduces Q methodology to expand the methodological repertoire for EMI research. The first section summarises the accelerated application of Q methodology to language education research and its limited use in EMI research. The second section outlines some essential philosophical and methodological assumptions underlying the methodology. The next section delineates its procedures, which is followed by an example study illustrating its use in EMI research. Finally, the chapter concludes by discussing its potential use in several areas of EMI research.
