Questionnaires in language teaching research

Questionnaires are often used to examine people’s attitudes, beliefs and behaviours in language learning and teaching. The data we get from questionnaire research can be especially insightful and satisfying when patterns emerge from a large number of respondents, when apparent differences or similarities are found among groups, or when relationships are ascertained among variables. As researchers, we feel empowered when we make recommendations for learning and teaching if the pattern we find is not only salient and strong, but also attested on a large scale. However, by nature, survey research is exploratory and shallow. It often does not go beyond pattern finding or relationship mapping. The patterns themselves are long on description and short on explanation. And of course, with every pattern there are exceptions. Moreover, just like any other research tool, the questionnaire we use will need to be valid, and consistently so, in terms of eliciting what it is designed to elicit. Most consumers of our research only care about our conclusions and pedagogical implications. As researchers, however, it is our responsibility to make sure that we have selected the right tool, and that the tool we have used to reach our conclusions is indeed trustworthy. The questionnaire as a research instrument has been a concern for applied linguistics for some time. As early as 1990, Reid (1990) traced the processes in developing her learning styles measure and boldly revealed the ‘dirty laundry of ESL [English as a second language] survey research’. Luppescu and Day (1990) attempted to develop a questionnaire to canvass the attitudes and beliefs of Japanese learners and teachers towards the learning of English, but found it difficult to validate the student questionnaire. In fact, instead of arriving at any conclusions about student beliefs, they presented a ‘more important conclusion’, that ‘questionnaire data should not blindly be accepted or considered meaningful unless they have been properly validated’ (p. 125).