Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods

In recent years and because of its initial influence, the Social Psychology approach has dominated L2 motivation research. The Social Psychology dominance is based on a concomitant emphasis on results which are replicable, reliable, and generalizable to different types of L2 learning groups. Therefore the quantitative research approach has been commonly used in L2 motivation research studies. Dörnyei defines the quantitative research approach and describes its importance in the psychological field in conjunction with L2 motivation: ―The essential characteristic of quantitative research is that it employs categories, viewpoints and models as precisely defined by the researcher in advance as possible, and numerical or directly quantifiable data are collected to determine the relationship between these categories, to test research hypotheses and to enhance the aggregation of knowledge… L2 motivation research has traditionally followed the principles of quantitative social psychology‖ (2001, p 192). In addition, Williams and Burden in their description of the psychometric approach (quantitative method) state: ―A hypothesis is made that a particular characteristic (for instance, motivation) is likely to influence success in language learning… the results of the two measures are submitted to statistical analysis and statistically significant relationships are sought, conclusions are drawn about the contribution of the particular characteristics to learning a language.‖ (1997, p 89).

Researchers have traditionally applied quantitative methods to measure and understand L2 motivation and its potential contribution in learning a target language. Further, L2 researchers have traditionally favoured the quantitative method to understand L2 motivation, as it is a direct method which applies direct questions. These surveys, which are administered at a single point in time, involve self-report questionnaires with closed-ended items and have been widely used by researchers to investigate learners‘ motivation.

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Studies in L2 motivation aim at describing participants‘ characteristics, opinions and motivation towards learning a target language. Therefore, the classical tool applied to achieve this aim is the use of a questionnaire as it applies direct questions. Thereafter, the data obtained from applying questionnaires are typically processed by means of descriptive statistical analyses to provide percentages and frequencies. Results represented by percentages and frequencies can be subsequently used for further analysis using inferential statistical procedures to explore the relationship between the assessed variables.

Questionnaires as a research method to collect data have both advantages and disadvantages. The main positive side of questionnaire is that the data obtained are considered as statistically replicable, reliable and therefore generalizable. Struman states that the main advantage of the quantitative method lies in the fact that ―it gives us the opportunity to see how representative the written comments are and whether these comments are distributed randomly through the sample‖ (1996, p 350). Furthermore, a major attraction or advantage of questionnaires is their unprecedented efficiency in many aspects, such as research time, research effort and financial resources. Moreover, the process of data collection and analyzing the collected data is relatively inexpensive and economical in terms of labour. For instance, by administering a questionnaire to a group of people, an individual can collect a huge amount of information in a very short time compared to the personal investment of time required to interview the same number of participants. Therefore the survey method saves the researcher‘s and participant‘s time. Further, when the researcher needs to analyse the collected data, using a well-structured questionnaire can make the researcher‘s work easier in regard to processing data, which can also be relatively straightforward and requires only a short amount of time.

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In contrast, although the virtues of the quantitative method described in the above paragraphs might present it as the perfect available method, the quantitative method has some serious disadvantages. The quantitative method‘s limitations have led researchers to argue that questionnaire data are not ultimately valid or reliable (Nakata 2006).

Questionnaires cannot yield data on the contextual variability of L2 learners‘ motivational factors and on their temporal variability. Dörnyei highlights the downsides of using questionnaires only in an L2 motivation study: ―They average out responses across the whole sample or subsample, and by working with concepts of averages it is impossible to do justice to the subjective variety of an individual life. Similar scores can result from quite different underlying motivational processes, and the quantitative methods are generally less sensitive to uncovering the motivational dynamics involved than qualitative techniques. There is no question that a deep interview with a language learner can provide far richer data than even the most detailed questionnaire‖ (2001, p 93). Spolsky, in his turn, questions the validity of using the quantitative method to investigate learners‘ motivational factors: ―To attempt to reduce their orientation, attitude, and motivation to a single scale is clearly a distortion… They [questionnaires] remain the bare skeleton, as unlikely to account for the complexity of language practices and ideology as a simple formula… Knowing that language is the kind of knowledge that Code characterized as contextualized, dynamic, and reciprocal, depending on the context in which it is learned‖ (2000, p 165).

Another drawback of the quantitative method in L2 motivation is the participants‘ responses to questionnaires‘ items. In other words, questionnaires which do not contain open items are constrained by the constructs which have been imposed by the researcher on the respondents. Questionnaires with closed-ended items only prevent the participants from expressing their own opinions when filling in questionnaires.

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Furthermore, using closed-ended items only does not allow participants to depend on their own expressions of their understanding of the phenomenon under investigation (Elliott and Bempechat, 2002).

In his turn, Skehan in 1989 claimed that quantitative methods as an analysis factor have certain limitations since ―such scales are extremely fallible in what they measure and how they measure‖ (1989, p 10-11). In particular, it is very hard to investigate L2 learners‘ minds to understand how they make their own sense of the L2 learning process. This is because there are no two learners with the same language learning experience, since each learner is different from any other in a unique way. Therefore this kind of approach does not necessarily assist researchers in fruitfully understanding L2 learners. Despite the limitations of the quantitative survey methods, they have provided significant advances in understanding motivation in L2 learning.

Qualitative or interpretive methods, on the other hand, have their strength in rich descriptive texts. Denizin and Lincoln define the qualitative method as ―multimethod in focus, involving an interpretive and naturalistic approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them‖ (1994, p 2). Qualitative methods are not yet commonly used in second language motivation research, although the value of employing these methods in the L2 motivation research field is being increasingly recognised (Dörnyei, 2001).

While quantitative methods certainly can shed the light on various aspects of L2 language learning – among which is L2 motivation – qualitative methods offer a different point of view, with a more contextualized and holistic view of the various factors which interact within the L2 learning process. Baker claims that using indirect approaches such as interviews to investigate learners‘ attitudes towards a target

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language guarantees a closer and valid look ―[with] long interviews that give us an opportunity to explore in conversation and through stories and anecdotes the attitudes, identities, and ideologies of our subjects and to gather reports of language use in various domains and with various members of their social network. This approach guarantees the multi-methodological data, the triangulation as it were, that builds our confidence in the results.‖ (1992, p 162).

A main difference between qualitative and quantitative methods is that the qualitative method focuses on the participants‘ rather than the researcher‘s priorities and interpretations. Therefore interpretive methods can be more contextually sensitive and offer a more holistic view than quantitative methods. This is because researchers in qualitative methods do not set out to test preconceived hypotheses and perceptions; rather, they aim to define analytic categories only during the process of research per se. Used on its own or in a tandem with the quantitative method, the qualitative method can offer an advantageous lens to investigate in greater detail L2 learners‘ views. Therefore it can yield a clearer understanding of the different factors in learning an L2 language.

In qualitative methods, numerical data collection is excluded in favour of collecting natural data in various forms of data elicitation employed by the researcher, for example notes taken by the researcher during a classroom observation and participants‘ verbalizations of their own experiences about particular situations during interviews. In order to address the research questions and increase the credibility of the obtained results, the researcher has to consider what kind of data and how much data are needed when selecting among research methods (Dörnyei, 2001). Analysis in qualitative research consists of discovering meaningful themes and patterns.

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5.4 Towards Combining Methods (Use of Quantitative and Qualitative Research