Jack Block’s well known and oft-cited monograph, The Q-Sort Method in Personality Assessment and Psychiatric Research (Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1961; reissued Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press, 1978, subsequently out of print), has been rewritten, amplified, importantly updated and published February 15, 2008 by APA Books as The Q-Sort in Character Appraisal: Encoding subjective impressions of persons quantitatively. Information about the book can be found at the APA Books website.
For over half a century, the Q-Sort has been administered to thousands of individuals to quantify personality in a variety of clinical settings. Through the years, the procedure has been greatly enhanced by subsequent conceptual and methodological developments and has gained wide currency in research in clinical settings.
“In this long-awaited expansion of his classic 1961 monograph, Jack Block traces the history of the Q-sort, from the early development of the CAQ descriptors, to the surprising results obtained in using the Q-sort in clinical psychology, and to current uses and future possibilities for research applications. Major versions of the Q-Sort currently in use are included, complete with instructions, remarks from the author's research experience, and descriptive "Q-Sort prototypes" for the appraiser's reference.
Jack Block (2008). The Q-sort in character appraisal: Encoding subjective impressions of persons quantitatively. Washington, DC: APA Books (American Psychological Association). 208 pp., $59.95 ($49.95 APA members/affiliates) cloth, ISBN: 978-1-4338-0315-4.
The Table of Contents contains the following headings:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: The CQ-Procedure: Expressive Intuitively and Empirically
1. A Perspective on Subjective Person Evaluations
2. The CQ Procedure Described and Demonstrated
Part II: The CQ-Procedure: Evolving a Lexicon and a Syntax
3. Developing the CAQ Descriptors
4. The CAQ Descriptors: Criticisms and Rejoinders
5. Q-Sort Methodology
6. CQ-Psychometrics
7. On the Process of Characterizing a Person by the CQ-Method
Part III: The CQ-Procedure: Research Applications and Clinical Relevance
8. CQ-Research Applications
9. Subjective Impressions in Clinical Psychology
10. A Salmagundi of Q and a Salutation to Stephenson
Appendices A–G
References
Tables
As indicated, chapter 10 contains a tribute to William Stephenson and includes a fair-minded summary of his methodology, with notice given of the way in which it differs from Block’s use of the Q sort. He acknowledges, for instance, that “the Stephenson perspective and the present one differ in that the one expresses personal attitudes or opinions regarding a personally-removed topic while the second expresses an appraiser’s personal perceptions/evaluations of another person,” and that “the subsequent processing of these data of subjective origin is quite different, where the Stephensonian Q-approach and present Q-orientation fundamentally diverge in their concerns.”
In addition to the summary of Stephenson’s position, chapter 10 contains comments about the Waters Attachment Q-Sort (AQS), Jones’s Psychotherapy Process Q-Sort (PQS), Funder et al.’s Riverside Behavioral Q-Sort, and the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-200 (SWAP-200).
Those who have used the California Q-Sort in the past or who anticipate using it will be pleased to learn that the appendices contain details about the California Adult (CAQ) and California Child Q-Sets (CCQ), CAQ prototypes (for optimal adjustment, male paranoid, female hysteric, ego resiliency, under control), CCQ prototypes (for prosocial, attention deficit with hyperactivity, internalizing, ego-resiliency, under control), the Common Language Version of the CCQ, the California Environmental Q-Set (CEQ), the Child-Rearing Practices Report (CRPR), the Parental Practices Report (CPPR), CRPR prototypes (for authoritarian-autocratic, authoritarian responsive, indulgent-permissive, indifferent-uninvolved), the Adjective Q-Set (AJQ) for the non-professional sorter, the Teaching Strategy Q-Set (TSQ), plus other support material.
“Jack Block received his B.A. from Brooklyn College, his M.A. from the University of Wisconsin, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University, majoring in clinical psychology with minors in sociology and physiology. His subsequent career has been as Professor of Psychology at the University of California, at Berkeley.
“He has published extensively. He is known for the book, Lives Through Time, on the Berkeley longitudinal study from the 1930s and an ambitious three decade longitudinal research study with his late wife, Jeanne Humphrey Block (c.f., e.g., Venturing a 30-year Longitudinal Study, in The American Psychologist, 2006), his theoretical writings (e.g., the book, Personality as an Affect-Processing System, 2002 and the 1982 Child Development article, Assimilation, accommodation, and the dynamics of personality development), various consequential methodological evaluations (e.g., the book, The Challenge of Response Sets and the 1995 Psychological Bulletin critique, A contrarian view of the five-factor approach to personality description), and diverse empirical contributions regarding the central constructs of resiliency and ego-control. Over the years, he has been on the board of a number of journals in personality and development.
“On sabbaticals and short leaves, he has taught at or been associated with the Institute for Social Research in Oslo, Norway; the Yale-Harvard-Florence project in Florence, Italy, the University of Melbourne in Melbourne, Australia, and the Henry Murray Research Center at Radcliffe. He has received numerous national and international awards, one of which was subsequently named after him.”
Those interested in additional information about Jack Block may wish to consult his 2003 autobiographical article, “My Unexpected Life,” Journal of Personality Assessment, 81, 194-208.
