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The purpose of this study is to use multiple consumer research methods to examine perceptions of theme lines for media campaigns to promote awareness of Medicare information sources.

Participants were senior Medicare beneficiaries, their informal family caregivers, and coming‐of‐agers who will shortly be eligible for Medicare. To permit comparisons among methods, both qualitative focus groups data and quantitative Q‐sort data were collected, and the Q‐sort data were analyzed using both a tailored software package and a major software package.

The two most preferred lines were “answers to your health care questions” and “helping you help yourself”. Relative preference for those two lines varied across five identified information audience groups with different age and income profiles.

Future investigations to identify theme lines for various communication information audiences within this population should also examine disabled non‐senior Medicare beneficiaries, that is, those eligible due to disability rather than age. More broadly, future research should explore the use of Q‐sort data to conduct similar analyses with other populations and for other sorts of marketing communication campaigns.

The major practical implication is the demonstration of the collection and analysis of Q‐sort data, using a major software package, to identify theme lines to target different information audiences for advertising and marketing communication campaigns.

This study demonstrated the feasibility and efficiency of using Q‐sort methodology to identify theme lines and of analyzing the data using a major software package.

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a controversial psychiatric diagnosis. Despite an increasing amount of research looking at the BPD diagnosis when applied to young people, there is limited understanding of the key viewpoints of mental health professionals working with young people in the UK. This research aims to use Q-methodology to contribute to understanding the multiple views of the diagnosis.

Q-statements about views of the BPD diagnosis were selected from relevant journals, internet sites and social media platforms and were validated by a Q-methodology research group, the research supervisors and an online group of individuals with BPD. Q-sorts were then used to explore the viewpoints of 27 mental health professionals in the UK working with children and adolescents. Analysis of the data was completed using Q-methodology analysis software.

Three main factors emerged from the data, explaining 66% of the variance. Of the 27 participants, 24 loaded onto these three factors, defined as: harmful not helpful; language and optimism; and caution and specialist services. Three Q-sorts did not load significantly onto any one factor.

There appears to be at least three ways of understanding the BPD diagnosis for young people. It may be useful for clinicians to consider and share their own viewpoint, be open to difference and formulate difficulties from an individual perspective.

This study identifies and interprets the experiences and relationships of a host community to a marine national park in Sabah, Malaysian Borneo, as it transformed from a local recreation site into an international tourist destination. This chapter elaborates on an original and innovative amalgamation of qualitative methods used to collect data consisting of verbal and pictorial techniques, including focus group interviews, visitor employed photography, and an adapted Q-methodology incorporating photo-elicitation. The research design for data collection is provided as a guideline to illustrate how the study progressed through two essential parts. This study contributes to a gap in method on how to extract pictorial measures on a collective basis to systematically to produce group place meanings. Recommendations are suggested based on the challenges faced in this study. This innovative qualitative method was successful in deriving sense of place for a marine park.

This paper aims to use Q methodology to investigate Millennial perceptions toward private label or national brand apparel.

Q methodology was chosen to identify factors, which correspond to patterns of perceptions prevalent among Millennials. Participants were supplied with 14 statements that they sorted into two Q sorts – One representing perceptions of private label and the other representing perceptions of national brands. The Q sorts were completed through Qualtrics and participants answered open-ended questions on the placement of each statement within each Q sort.

Two factors emerged on private labels, highlighting patterns in price consciousness and uniqueness (acknowledged as patterns surrounding the desire for particular apparel characteristics). Three factors arose for national brand apparel, emphasizing the need for national brands to provide consumers with product security, quality and uniqueness (as identified through the unpreferred qualities national brands typically exhibit).

This study illustrates the various viewpoints retailers must consider when marketing apparel to a specific target demographic. In addition, a single perception (uniqueness) was found to connect motivations, which led to the development of a model for future inquiry.

Despite complete Q sorts and qualitative statements, participants' unfamiliarity with Q methodology and the sorting action of statements could be considered a limitation. The use of MTurk is also considered a limitation owing to the anonymity and possible deception of the workforce.

Private label brand personality growth has many retailers expanding their brand portfolios. Based on the findings of this study, specific opportunities are highlighted for the expansion and marketing of private labels and brand labels based on specific perceptions of a broad Millennial cohort.

Engaging with stakeholders in “a personal, intimate way” (Men and Tsai, 2016, p. 932) or “includ[ing] the ‘personal touch’” (Kent and Taylor, 1998, p. 323) is often seen as desirable in internal communication management. While the importance of personal communication is undisputed from the perspectives of internal communication, its communicators, and from internal stakeholders, this is not true when it comes to the dimensions and characteristics that constitute an experience of communication as feeling personal. The present study aims to explore what makes communication personal from the employees' perspective.

The study used the Q methodology and Q method, thus focusing on an individual's subjective perspective. The Q methodology was implemented in the form of a Q-sort survey exploring the perceptions of 32 German employees (selected from a representative cross-section of 400 employees in Germany, using a balanced-block design to maximize heterogeneity).

The results show that while direct and dyadic communication is often perceived as personal, many other dimensions and characteristics are also considered “personal” in both the literature and based on stakeholder perceptions. The Q-sort survey revealed four perception types whose perceptions of communication as “personal” vary widely, with all these types rejecting non-human communicators.

This study contributes to the limited understanding of employees' perceptions of internal communication as “personal.” It shows how the Q methodology and Q method—a rarely used perspective—can complement existing theoretical and empirical research on internal communication. For internal communication management, the findings show that a “one-size-fits-all” approach must be questioned and that a communication team's involvement in personal communication can have negative consequences.

This study seeks to examine the nature of consumers' perceptions of the value they derive from the everyday experiential consumption of mobile phones and how mobile marketing (m‐marketing) can potentially enhance these value perceptions.

Q methodology is used with a framework of experiential consumption and perceived consumer value, to examine how consumers' subjective perceptions and opinions of the two areas of interest are shared at a collective level. A total of 40 participants undertook two Q sorts and the data were analysed using PQ‐method.

The first Q sort identified three clusters of perceived value: the Mobile Pragmatists, the Mobile Connectors and the Mobile Revellers. The second Q sort identified two clusters of perceived value of m‐marketing: one emerging from the shared opinions of the Mobile Pragmatists and the Mobile Connectors, and the second from the Mobile Revellers.

The findings show how consumers can be segmented based on their contextualised perceived value of consuming mobile phones. The findings also show that m‐marketing can be tailored to enhance these value perceptions. The study demonstrates how to use Q methodology to examine subjective areas of consumer behaviour. Limitations relate to deriving statements for the Q sorts and the generalisability of the results.

The findings highlight ways to tailor m‐marketing strategies to complement consumers' perceptions of the value offered through their mobile phones.

The study contributes to existing theory and practice through using Q methodology to examine two subjective areas of consumer behaviour research: experiential consumption in everyday life and consumer perceived value, which is applied in the context of mobile phones and m‐marketing.

The impact of bullying and undermining behaviours on the National Health Service on costs, patient safety and retention of staff was well understood even before the Illing report, published in 2013, that reviewed the efficacy of training interventions designed to reduce bullying and harassment in the outputs. The purpose of this paper is to provide an example of a good programme well evaluated.

The methodology follows a broad realist approach, by specifying the underlying programme assumptions and intention of the designers. Three months after the event, Q-sort methodology was employed to group participants into one of three contexts – mechanism – output groups. Interviews were then undertaken with members of two of these groups, to evaluate how the programme had influenced each.

Q-sort identified a typology of three beneficiaries from the Stopit! workshops, characterised as professionals, colleagues and victims. Each group had acted upon different parts of the programme, depending chiefly upon their current and past experiences of bullying in hospitals.

The paper demonstrates the effectiveness of using Q-sort method to identify relevant CMOs in a realist evaluation framework.

The paper considers the effectiveness of the programme to reduce bullying, rather than teach victims to cope, and how it may be strengthened based upon the research findings and Illing recommendations.

Workplace bullying is invariably implicated in scandals concerning poor hospital practice, poor patient outcomes and staff illness. All too frequently, the sector responds by offering training in resilience, which though helpful, places the onus on the victim to cope rather than the employer to reduce or eliminate the practice. This paper documents and evaluates an attempt to change workplace practices to directly address bullying and undermining.

The paper describes a new programme broadly consistent with Illing report endorsements. Second, it illustrates a novel evaluation method that highlights rigorously the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes at the pilot stage of an intervention identifies contexts and mechanisms via factor analysis using Q-sort methodology.

This paper describes the use of Q‐sort technique in the scale development process. An exploratory study is presented to show the application of this methodology. The study takes its dimensions from established models of service quality. The result proposes that Q‐sort technique is a useful methodological approach in eliminating the validity and reliability problems particularly in the early scale development stages.

Increasing amount of empirical research in operations and supply chain management is using institutional theory as its theoretical lens. Yet, a common scale to measure the three institutional pressures – coercive, mimetic and normative – is lacking. Many studies use proxies or a single, grouped, construct of external pressures which present methodological challenges. This study aims to present the development of multi-item scales to measure institutional pressures (in a purchasing context).

First, items were generated based on the theoretical construct definitions. These items were then tested through academic sorting and an international survey. The first empirical testing failed to produce reliable and valid scales, and further refinement and analysis revealed that coercive pressure splits into two separate constructs. A second q-sorting was then conducted with purchasing practitioners, followed by another survey in Italy to verify the new measurement scale for four institutional pressures.

The multimethod and multistage measurement development reveals that empirically the three institutional pressures actually turn into four pressures. The theoretical construct of coercive pressure splits into two distinct constructs: coercive market pressure and coercive regulatory pressure.

The results of the paper, namely, the measurement scales, are an important theoretical and methodological contribution to future empirical research. They present a much-needed measurement for these theoretical constructs increasingly used in management research.