CouchDB n & q values

I'm new to CouchDB. I'm going through its config. Current configuration is as below. n = 3 q = 8 I understand n = 3 means 3 nodes and q = 8 means 8 shards. I don't have a cluster in place. Is it possible to make n = 1 without affecting data consistency? (This is a production DB.) Will it help me reduce overall DB size?