Interviews September 22, 2008

5. Questionnaires a. What it is/when to use them Types of Questionnaires group/individual open/closed a. Face-to-face (Utah project) b. Telephone (Telsur) c. Postal (old dialect studies) d. On-line (Dialect survey, survey

6. Interviews a. What it is/when to use them Interviews consist of open ended questions When would you use an interview instead of a questionnaire? Example interviews: 50 cent’s use of African American speech in rap and interviews Labov’s examination of /r/-dropping in NYC Examination of African American speech in middle class white males (blackinese) Students’ experience living in the FLSR

6. Interviews b. How to use them (example studies using this method) Try to create questions that elicit the linguistic feature you are looking for Try to get participants to forget that they are part of a research study A really good interviewer usually just has to ask one or two questions

5-6. Questionnaires/Interviews b. How to use it (example studies using these methods) Interviews/Questionnaires and surveys Examples: 1. Please pronounce the following words: mail, still/steel, pull/pool, full/fool 2. Does the u in student sound like the oo in too or the u in use 3. After Bill had _____ (bought) the computer, he realized he'd made a mistake 4. Which is better: Who am I talking to? / To whom am I talking? 5. What do you call the thing you rent from the video store (movie, show, video) 6. Have you ever had a near death experience? Tell me about it. 7. What kinds of games did you play as a child? 8. What do people here say funny? 9. What do you think about the Utah accent? 10. Tell me about your worst day.

Some challenges in creating and presenting questionnaires/interviews 1. Achievement of a random sample 2. Confusion over some of the questions 3. Worry about keeping anonymity 4. Worry about saying the wrong thing 5. Anger of some of the groups (non-LDS participants) 6. Belief that they did not have a Utah “accent” 7. Suspicions about our work/danger to us 8. Overexcitement about helping us out 9. People’s feelings about language (Utah English) 10. Coaching by husbands/wives

5-6. Questionnaires and Interviews c. Advantages and Disadvantages Advantages: If ask specific questions-- easy to elicit what you want Every subject gets the same questions (compared to trying to hear same pronunciation or construction in all subjects in spontaneous speech) Disadvantages : Observer’s paradox People’s beliefs about what they do often don’t coincide with their behavior. People think they say X more or less often than they really do. Stigmatized regionalisms/ethnolect (Labov’s /r/-less study) People may tell you what you want to hear (MTC motivation study) People may sometimes lie and researchers are sometimes biased Mismatch between researcher and subjects (e.g. African-American children and white, male, middle-aged researcher)

Statistics Two new statistical analyses: 1. Paired t-tests 2. Unpaired t-tests

T-Test T-test How likely is it that two samples are taken from the same population? T-test looks at the ratio of the difference in group means to the variance Sample 1 Sample 2 Figure taken from

T-Tests: Terms Remember the three things we have to look at with statistics: 1. t-statistic 2. p value 3. Degrees of freedom (df) Unpaired (Independent) t-test: N 1 +N 2 -2 Paired t-test: N-1

T-Tests: Other Terms Usually in a t-test you are looking for the effect of X on Y The effect of gender on ability to recognize a Utah accent The effect of age at the time of learning English on the ability to produce English vowels X = Independent variable: the variable you think may have an effect on scores Y = Dependent variable: the scores

T-Tests: Other Terms One-tailed vs. two-tailed predictions: If we hypothesize that we know which of the two groups will do better, then we are making a one-tailed prediction If we don‘t know which of the two groups will be better, we are making a two-tailed prediction If there is not enough evidence for a directional difference, a two-tailed test is safe.

How do we report findings? There is a significant effect of condition on reaction time. The average reaction time in condition a was 238.7ms longer than in condition b (t = 6.12, df = 62, p < 0.001).

Paired t-tests When to use them: 1. With continuous data 2. With data where you have the score for each participant 3. When you want to compare participants’ responses to two things Example studies: 1. Pre- and post-test scores 2. Compare each participants’ responses to speakers from England versus speakers from Alabama

Paired t-tests How to use them: Step 1: Put data into spreadsheet correctly Step 2: Go to Step 3: Paste data into calculator and run statistics Example: Listeners’ perceptions of Alabaman speaker versus Network American speaker

Unpaired t-tests When to use them: 1. With continuous data 2. With data where you have the score for each participant 3. When you want to compare two different groups’ scores Example studies: 1. Compare male/female differences to short term memory test 2. Compare responses to Utah English of Utahans versus Westerners 3. Compare adults’ to children’s perception of L2 vowels

Paired t-tests How to use them: Step 1: Put data into spreadsheet correctly Step 2: Go to Step 3: Paste data into calculator and run statistics Example: Native versus non-native speakers’ perceptions

Unpaired or paired/ dependent or independent? For each of the following, decide whether you would use a paired or unpaired t-test. Also decide what the dependent and independent variables are. 1. Whether listeners can more quickly decide whether words (run) or non-words (blick) are words or not (lexical decision task) 2. Whether children or adults are faster at deciding whether words are words or not 3. Whether students are more accurate on a grammaticality task before or after training 4. Whether males or females are more likely to say “mountain” with a glottal stop