POETQ is owned and operated by HSMC at the University of Birmingham.
The application was developed in collaboration between Stephen Jeffares, an RCUK fellow in the School of Government and Society, Helen Dickinson at HSMC and programmed by Greg Hughes in the School of Computer Science.
The original POET was developed by Helen Dickinson and Jon Glasby and has been used to evaluate outcomes amongst health and social care partnerships.
Stephen Jeffares had been using Q methodology online since 2007 to explore different aspects of collaboration and partnership.
In attempting to integrate the POET approach with a Q methodology study Greg Hughes joined the team to work on developing a new web-based application. In the process they decided to try and overcome some of the limitations traditionally associated with web-based Q sorts. Two particular issues with existing tools was the amount of time 'dragging and dropping' that participants were expected to perform and compatibility issues, because of a dependence on Flash.
The current version of POETQ is designed explicitly for the SDO project, however if you are interested in discussing how the POETQ interface could be adapted for another use, please get in touch.
