Rationale Procedure Group sociolinguistic 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