Quantitative component: main study questionnaires

Two forms of the questionnaire were distributed: namely, a teacher form and a student form. These two forms are mainly similar with some differences in the background questions, as can be seen later. As mentioned earlier, the main sources of the

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questionnaire items are the exploratory interviews and the previous literature investigating L2 motivational strategies (see Appendices from 12 to 15 for the English and Arabic versions of the questionnaire). The questionnaire consists of three sections: the first section asks the participants to indicate their degree of agreement about each item. A six-point Likert Scale ranging from ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ was chosen to measure participants’ beliefs about the importance of using motivational strategies in the English language classrooms. It was chosen because it was important that participants take a position and try to express their opinion in one direction. This section includes 60 items belonging to the ten examined scales; it also has five negatively worded items, as shown in the following table. The five negatively worded items were added as suggested by Dörnyei (2003) to avoid acquiescence bias which is the tendency to agree with questions that sound good (Robinson, Shaver, & Wrightsman, 1991) and these were not included in the item analysis.

Table 4.12: Questionnaire scales and the number of items

Scale No of items 1. Ideal L2 self 4 2. L2 related values 6 3. Teacher behaviour 6 4. Goals 4 5. Learner autonomy 5 6. Task 4 7. Classroom atmosphere 9 8. Learner confidence 9 9. Learner group 6

10. Recognise students’ effort 7

Negatively worded items 5

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The second section of the questionnaire consists of general questions, such as age, nationality and university. The teacher form involved eight questions relating to age, nationality, gender, academic qualification, teaching qualification, teaching duration, place of work and the university type. The second section in the student form includes ten questions which are about age, nationality, gender, last academic qualification, place of study, university type, English level, score on the English level test, future academic department, and the language of instruction in the future department. The effect of the background information on participants’ perceptions about motivational strategies was examined.

The third section of the questionnaire is optional; it asks participants to fill in some personal details if they voluntarily agree to participate in the follow-up interviews. The personal details include their name, mobile number, email, and university name. So far, it can be seen that the first and third section of the questionnaire is the same in both forms, but there are some differences in the second section, which asks participants some background and general information.

The ordering of the questions is based on suggestions of previous research on the design of questionnaires (e.g., Dörnyei, 2003; Oppenheim, 1992). They suggested that the questionnaire should begin with questions relating to the topic of the study rather than background information or an interview invitation, which should be placed at the end of the questionnaire. Starting the questionnaires with background questions can ‘result in a kind of anticlimax in the respondents and it may be difficult to rekindle their enthusiasm again’ (Dörnyei, 2003, p.61).

133 4.4.4.1. Participants

The questionnaire was administered to 140 EFL teachers and 350 EFL students. They were all female and native Arabic speakers. The total response rate is high at 90%. The following table shows the number of participants from each institution.

Table 4.13: The number of participants in the questionnaires

University or college EFL teachers EFL students

University A 87 136

University B 6 109

University C 3 100

Total 96 345

Note: Total number= 441

The size of the groups of the teachers was clearly unequal and this was considered in choosing the statistical tests for the data analysis. In terms of the students, the group sizes were not equal, but there were not big differences.

4.4.4.2. Procedures

The questionnaires were distributed in November 2012, to EFL teachers and students. The teachers were handed the questionnaires by the researcher, while they were administered to students by their EFL teachers. The questionnaires were administered to students during class time and took approximately 15-25 minutes to complete. Signed informed consent forms were obtained from respondents prior to their completion of the questionnaires. The informed consent forms were attached to each questionnaire form – see Appendices 12 to 15.

134 4.4.4.3. Data analysis

The questionnaires were coded with numbers for anonymity purposes and input into SPSS 17.0. After the inputting of the data, the data were cleaned as uncompleted questionnaires and questionnaires that were answered carelessly were deleted. Then, the reliability of the scales was tested again using Cronbach Alpha, which will be described in the following section. Non-parametric tests were used for analysing the data because the data did not meet the assumptions of parametric tests (more information about this point will be provided at the beginning of the Results Chapter). The principal statistical procedures used for the analysis of data were descriptive analysis, the Mann-Whitney test to compare between two groups and the Kruskal- Wallis test to examine the difference between more than two groups.