Misgivings about the independency of items in Q-sorting are shown to be due to misunderstandings about what is operational and what is not, and to the fallacy of thinking of items in a Q-sample in logical instead of in psychological-situational terms. Q-samples are composed of balanced block designs for systematic, logical reasons. But Q-sorting has no such logical involvement; it concerns, instead, the subject’s understanding or apperception of a situation. What is independent, and what not, is therefore a matter of fact, not of definition. And because operations are inductive, Q-sortings are analyzed by inductive factor analysis rather than by variance analysis, though for some purposes the latter is of course in order.