“Q-Sort” as a Method for Identifying Subjective, Objective, and Interactive Positions of High School Students in Communication

Aim. To empirically substantiate the possibility of diagnosing the propensity of high school students for subjective, objective, and interactive positions in communication based on the “Q-Sort” method within the context of V. I. Panov’s eco-psychological typology of subject-environment interactions.

Methodology. The sample comprised 89 students in grades 10–11 from a secondary school in Vladimir, aged 15 to 18 years. The “Q-Sort” method (W. Stephenson) was used to identify six behavioral tendencies such as dependence, independence, sociability, unsociability, acceptance of struggle, and avoidance of struggle. Statistical data processing involved the Mann–Whitney U test and Spearman’s rank correlation analysis.

Results The dominance of the objective position was revealed: a high level of dependence was recorded in 29% of respondents, while only 2% had a low level of dependence. The subjective position was expressed in a relatively small part of the sample (about 12%) and manifested in three patterns: constructive-dialogical (independence and sociability), autonomous-defensive (independence and unsociability), and conflict-offensive (independence and acceptance of struggle). A phenomenon of “sociability of the objective type” was discovered – a significant positive correlation between sociability and avoidance of struggle (p≤0.01), indicating that outwardly friendly behavior can mask an object-subject position based on the desire to avoid conflicts and adapt to others.

Research implications of the research lies in expanding the understanding of the nature of high school students’ communicative positions by applying the eco-psychological typology of subject-environment interactions. This approach helps overcome the limitations of the traditional “subject-object / subject-subject communication” dichotomy and reveals the internal heterogeneity of these positions. The obtained results substantiate the need for targeted work on developing genuinely interactive communication in high school students by creating conditions for mastering subject-collaborative and subject-generating types of communicative interactions. They can also be used for the diagnosis and correction of communicative behavior in the educational environment.

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