PhD research on polyglots- help needed

Hi all,

I am a PhD student at the School of Education at Durham University in the UK. I am researching polyglots’ beliefs about language learning, and the strategies that they adopt to successfully learn them. I have a short questionnaire that should take no longer than 20 minutes to complete. If you are 18 or older and speak at least 4 languages at B1 level (CEFR) I would appreciate your help. The link is below. All responses are anonymous.

Many thanks!

Voke (ps. this questionnaire is different from the one I sent out last year)

University profile: About Us - Durham University

Does “4 languages” include my native language in your opinion?

Hi, voke!

Just some points:

  1. The link to your University profile doesn’t work.

  2. I did your survey - and it didn’t take me 20 minutes :slight_smile:
    However, I’m curious to know: I’m not an expert in survey design, but does it really make sense to ask the same question in many different ways? In other words: You have a lot of redundancy in your survey! And shouldn’t this normally be avoided?
    “Every question in your survey needs to support your main topic and contribute to the overall survey goal. That being said, avoid asking redundant, irrelevant, or ambiguous questions.” Student Satisfaction Survey: 24 Question Samples + Template

  3. BTW, motivation is completely overrated. Good (learning) habits will save you,
    motivation and will (i.e. voluntarism) won’t! :slight_smile:

Have a nice day
Peter

Thank you Peter for completing the survey. You arent the first person to say that some of the questions seem redundant. Unfortunately, using a multi item design for the survey requires me to measure the same construct several times. My previous questionnaire was a single item questionnaire but this causes issues when proving the reliability of the measurment tool.
The university’s page appears to be down.

Regards,

Voke

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“a multi item design for the survey requires me to measure the same construct several times”!
Ah, interesting!
Then good luck with your survey (evaluation)!

I do including native English but I have not CEFR cert, sorry.

I’m a bit confused you claim to have this extensive academic background on your profile including in “the social sciences” and yet didn’t know that. I learned as an undergrad that you need to ask the same question in several ways for reliability (including inverting it at least once), it’s the very basics of academic survey design.

Hi, Adam!

Well, I took some courses on statistics both in political and computer science.
And I still have several books about this subject at home. But, I’ve forgotten a lot
because that was many years ago.
So, if you don’t use it, you lose it :slight_smile:

When I mentioned social complexity research, I referred to approaches that conceptualize the “social” as an emergent dimension sui generis. This means the social dimension (as interactions, organizations, etc.) can’t be reduced to individual actions, behavior, thoughts, etc. Or, to cite the sociologist Niklas Luhmann:
“Humans cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate”

Ini other words, one of the fundamental puzzles in sociology / the social sciences is: How do humans coordinate their behavior if they aren’t able to couple their perceptions, thoughts, emotions, etc.? And the answer of socio-emergent approaches is: Whenever humans have to deal with each other, a basic coordination mechanism pops up (emerges). And we can call this mechanism “communication”, “discourse”, “social system”, etc.
These approaches include in my case:

Apart from CAS, the common denominator of all these approaches isn’t only their socio-emergent perspective
but also their explicitly distinction-based (dynamic) constructivism, that is: distinctions (beyond language in the sense
of Saussure and the structuralist tradition) are used to construct something as something. In short: “All social / conscious
realities are based on distinction-based constructions.”
Nowadays, I’m interested in applying these research traditions to language learning and organizations / start-ups / social networks. BUT: Neither of these approaches includes “(undergrad) survey design” :slight_smile:

Have a nice weekend
Peter

1 Like

I have started it but not finished. For me the questions are too general to give an answer. I have had teachers who taught very successfully and others who didn’t. Also, things have changed since I was a schoolkid / teenager and now. So how am I to answer a question about what ‘schools’ do? Also, how difficult your first language was also depends on what language it is and what your native language is… goals can differ for every single language - for me they do…

Yes, it does.

That’s OK John. That part of the questionnaire is intended for self evaluation.

Done^^