Should internal class methods return values or just modify instance variables?

It's perfectly fine to modify self.query_dict as the whole idea of object-oriented programming is that methods can modify an object's state. As long as an object is in a consistent state after a method has finished, you're fine. The fact that _build_query is an internal method does not matter. You can choose to call _build_query after in __init__ to construct the query already when the object is created.

The decision mostly matters for testing purposes. For testing purposes, it's convenient to test each method individually without necessarily having to test the whole object's state. But that does not apply in this case because we're talking about an internal method so you alone decide when to call that method, not other objects or other code.

Returning a value is preferable as it allows you to keep all the attribute modifying in one place (__init__). Also, this makes it easier to extend the code later; suppose you want to override _build_query in a subclass, then the overriding method can just return a value, without needing to know which attribute to set. Here's an example:

class QueryHelper(object):    def __init__(self, param, text):        self._param = param        self._query = self._build_query(text)    def _build_query(self, text):        return text + " and ham!"class RefinedQueryHelper(QueryHelper):    def _build_query(self, text):        # no need to know how the query object is going to be used        q = super(RefinedQueryHelper, self)._build_query()        return q.replace("ham", "spam")

vs. the "setter version":

class QueryHelper(object):    def __init__(self, param, text):        self._param = param        self._build_query(text)    def _build_query(self, text):        self._query = text + " and ham!"class RefinedQueryHelper(QueryHelper):    def _build_query(self, text):        # what if we want to store the query in __query instead?        # then we need to modify two classes...        super(RefinedQueryHelper, self)._build_query()        self._query = self._query.replace("ham", "spam")

If you do choose to set an attribute, you might want to call the method _set_query for clarity.

If you return anything at all, I'd suggest self. Returning self from instance methods is convenient for method chaining, since each return value allows another method call on the same object:

foo.add_thing(x).add_thing(y).set_goal(42).execute()

This is sometimes referred to as a "fluent" API.

However, while Python allows method chaining for immutable types such as int and str, it does not provide it for methods of mutable containers such as list and set—by design—so it is arguably not "Pythonic" to do it for your own mutable type. Still, lots of Python libraries do have "fluent" APIs.

A downside is that such an API can make debugging harder. Since you execute the whole statement or none of it, you can't easily see the object at intermediate points within the statement. Of course, I usually find print perfectly adequate for debugging Python code, so I'd just throw a print in any method whose return value I was interested in!