Rationale and scope Self-evaluation questionnaire

3.2 Group sociolinguistic questionnaire

3.2.1 Rationale

Sociolinguistic questionnaires are a direct way to gain information about language use patterns within a language community, including: domains of use, age and relationship of speakers, and the community members’ attitudes toward language use. Results from these questionnaires inform researchers about language use and vitality, language shift, and language attitudes. Administering these questionnaires in a group format allows the researchers to gather the opinions of several people at once, make observations about language attitudes and use during discussions, and gather a group consensus about the general language situation and attitudes within a village. Additionally, in Indonesia, the group format is more natural and culturally appropriate than isolating individuals for an interview. However, the group format may obscure viewpoints of some participants if others are dominating the group discussion.

3.2.2 Procedure

The group questionnaire was designed to investigate the language attitudes and language use patterns within the population segment aged 20–45 years. 3 When gathering groups of assistants, researchers attempted to find speakers within this age range, with an ideal group containing at least one individual in hisher 20s, one in hisher 30s, and one in hisher 40s. 4 Not all interviewees fit this ideal model, and other respondents were accepted for the interviews as well, though their answers were given less weight than the answers of respondents within the target age range. All informants were told to represent those aged 20–45 in their questionnaire answers. The researchers attempted to gather a minimum of two groups in each village, one consisting of males and one consisting of females. When possible, genders were separated to prevent domination by a segment of respondents due to gender roles. However, researchers did not prohibit males from participating in the “female” group interview or vice versa, when individuals of the opposite gender were present and desiring to participate. In some villages, a local representative such as a pastor, village head, or friend of a local researcher gathered respondents. In other villages, researchers themselves gathered respondents by finding groups of people sitting on porches or at warungs small local shops who were willing to be interviewed for the group sociolinguistic questionnaire.

3.3 Self-evaluation questionnaire

3.3.1 Rationale and scope

The self-evaluation questionnaire SEQ is a quick way to estimate an individual’s proficiency in a language based on self-reported information. Using the SEQ, researchers ask respondents whether or not they can perform certain tasks using the language in question. The SEQ is derived from the Foreign Service Institute’s self-evaluation test questions, which in turn correspond to Language Skill Level Descriptions of the Interagency Language Roundtable ILR Blair 1990, section 10.1, allowing researchers using the SEQ to roughly estimate the respondents’ proficiency 3 People aged 20–45 were considered to be the up-and-coming leaders and trendsetters in their community, including in matters of language use . 4 We included respondents in our group interviews with a wider range of ages because it was difficult to find many individuals within our target age range in the community during the daytime. by ILR level. 5 The SEQ relies on the assumption that “there is a hierarchy of tasks that corresponds to different levels of bilingual ability” Blair 1990, section 10.4. The weakness of the SEQ is that it is largely subjective. The SEQ is dependent on self-reported information likely to be influenced by personal bias, uncalibrated with any other instrument, and not sensitive to the ease or difficulty individuals may have accomplishing certain tasks using the language in question. However, the SEQ is considered adequate for understanding the larger picture of general language proficiency Grimes 1986, section 7.4. The SEQ’s role in this research is not to attempt to determine the exact language proficiency level of a TDN respondent, but rather to estimate the proficiency levels of TDN speakers and provide context for data gathered by sociolinguistic questionnaires. Specifically, the SEQ was used to answer the binary question: Is this respondent adequately proficient to benefit from vernacular written materials, i.e., at a level of ILR 3+ or greater? YN. 6 The scope of the SEQ was thus limited to testing proficiency up to level 3+, and not beyond. To strengthen the instrument, mother-tongue TDN speakers were trained to probe for verification while administering the SEQ by asking respondents to demonstrate their language abilities by performing the tasks named in the questionnaire.

3.3.2 SEQ development