CONSTRUCTING WHAT CAN BE SAID: CONCOURSE DEVELOPMENT IN Q-METHODOLOGICAL AUTISM RESEARCH

Abstract

Q methodology is a systematic procedure for studying subjective viewpoints: participants sort a set of statements according to their personal perspective, and the resulting patterns reveal distinct shared viewpoints within a group. The quality of this proc edure depends entirely on the quality of its central instrument. A statement pool that fails to represent the full range of relevant perspectives constrains what participants can express before a single sort has taken place. Despite this, the process of Q -set development in autism research is rarely documented with sufficient transparency to permit validity assessment, replication, or adaptation: sources are named, final instruments are presented, and the decisions in between remain opaque. This paper docum ents that process in full. Drawing on semi -structured interviews with 11 purposively sampled stakeholders in the Bavarian school system , an initial concourse of 173 statements was generated and reduced through four explicit criteria to a final instrument o f 39 statements, piloted with three autistic individuals before finalisation. The piloting phase identified perspectives entirely absent from eleven professional stakeholder interviews, illustrating how structured autistic involvement can surface viewpoint s that professionally generated concourses may not capture . Full traceability from coded interview segments to final statements is provided in the supplementary materials. The procedural model offered here does not exist in the published Q -autism literature and is offered as a replicable template for the field.