Working with human subjects

  • Stanley Milgram experiments in 1961-1962 (http://www.new-life.net/milgram.htm)

    • Question of how Nazis could get people to torture other people. Shock experiment with lab coated scientist standing by.

  • Universities require institutional review board approval to insure ethicality, avoid lawsuits, maintain their reputation, protect people.

  • My experience with supposedly BYU-sponsored phone survey

  • At any rate, we have approval for this class.

Interviews

Typically, in interviews you don’t manipulate, lead conversation; but rather, ask specific questions to elicit data.

Examples:

  • Wendy Baker / David Eddington: what makes Utah English different?

  • Study on which states have "best English"

  • Questions about rural life 50-60 years ago

Types:

  • individual / group

  • open / closed:

    • closed (What is this called? What words do you use that your wife doesn't?)

    • open: let them talk and then see what you find (personal experiences, scary experience)

Issues:

  1. Is it spontaneous, non-reflective speech?

  2. Can the people really answer -- i.e. is it possible to retrieve their intuitions and knowledge (my experience)

Questionnaires and surveys

Examples:

  • Please pronounce the following words: mail, still/steel, pull/pool, full/fool

  • Does the u in student sound like the oo in too or the u in use

  • After Bill had _____ (bought) the computer, he realized he'd made a mistake

  • Which is better: Who am I talking to? / To whom am I talking?

  • What do you call the thing you rent from the video store (movie, show, video)

  • What do you call the paper container you take things home from the store in? (sack, bag)

  • Count to ten

  • What are the days of the week

  • What do people here say funny?

Some online examples:

Dialect survey

Word stress (THIR-teen, thir-TEEN)

Dark and Light /l/ survey (click on link on bottom to see results)

Advantages of questionnaires and surveys:

  • Specific items relate to specific hypothesis -- 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)

Issues in selecting subjects

  • Representativeness (your friends, BYU students, "marginal groups")

  • Compatibility (enough similarity between sub-groups, get info on them)

  • Issue of anonymity (vs confidentiality)

How to elicit information:

  • Written vs. auditory (still/steel, pill/peel)

  • Given in person vs mailed out (my survey from car dealership -- skews results)

  • Online (advantages? disadvantages?)

  • Whether or not researcher is present

  • Direct (Rolling Stone at BYU. "I'm studying X", "investigate your dialect") vs. indirect

Different types of questions

  • Completion: (A person who helps put out fires is called a ____): are all of the answers relevant?

  • Picture: but are all of the answers relevant: tennis shoes, Nikes

  • Multiple choice: (sneakers, tennis shoes, gym shoes): but have you listed them all?

  • Likert-type scales: (This speaker sounds friendly/Jewish/low class): always positive/negative on one side?

  • True/false (Do you say who or whom): overly simplistic response

  • Open-ended questions ("What do you think is different about Utah dialect"): potentially leading / biasing ("What is is about Utah dialect that you find particularly strange?)

  • General issues in terms of questions:

    • Usable data (numbers) vs patronizing (treating them as data-producers)

    • Number of questions

    • Ordering of questions

    • "Cross-referencing"

    • Running a pilot study first (for large projects)

General problems with questionnaires and surveys:

  • Observer’s paradox-you want naturally occurring speech, but people may not produce that when they know they are being observed. Have microphone on them, person jotting down answers.

  • 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

  • People may tell you what you want to hear (Hi, I’m Mormon, what do you think about Mormons?)

  • People may sometimes lie and researchers are sometimes biased (political surveys, research on the "gay gene", customer satisfaction surveys)

  • Mismatch between researcher and subjects (e.g. African-American children and white, male, middle-aged researcher)