Methodology for Studying Agreement and Disagreements of Divergent Social Groups

The focus of this paper is upon developing a comparative methodology that establishes if there are any statistical commonalities in divergent groups. The methodology developed employees a three tiered data collection approach that integrates a range of methods such as questionnaires, interviews and Q matrices; along with combining multiple methodologies, the main two being Delphi Convergence Approach and Q Methodology. Furthermore this paper will discuss the use of the IBM SPSS Software as a program that offers flexible analysis of the data collected, weather this is for individual factors or the data as a whole. The methodology discussed was created to analyze if minority groups, (Case Study: LGBT+, disabilities, ethnic and religious minorities within Durham University), have shared experiences. The individuals with in these groups are vastly different which is what lead to the need to develop a flexible methodology which can simultaneously evaluate the commonalities between multiple varying groups. This multi-tiered methodology yielded statistically sound results showing the areas of strong correlation and disagreements between the different groups thus proposing a method for investigating potentially massive data through analyzing samples of representatives of key profiles. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.