The Students’ Questionnaire

The second questionnaire can be seen as a reduced form of the first questionnaire, yet with certain necessary changes; such as some categorical variables of specialty and academic level. The targeted medical colleges were introduced as options in order to limit the categories that might be given by students. These colleges included the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Dentistry, the Faculty of Applied Medical Sciences, the Faculty of Nursing, and The Faculty of Pharmacology. In addition, the levels the students were attending were provided in the first section, with the first and second levels being excluded. These two levels of the preparatory year were excluded assuming that freshmen were not aware yet about the nature of the study or the provided English courses in particular, due to the unsuitability of the administering time of the

questionnaire. According to Andrews et al. (2003), coded and default information reduce non-response to questions.

137 4.5.2.5Questionnaire Reliability and Validity

Validity is defined as the extent to which the instrument accurately measures what it has been designed for and supposed to measure (Dornyei, 2003; Vogt, 1999). The

questionnaire items must be checked and reviewed in order to ensure the content validity, which focuses on the degree to which the instrument measures the intended content area, or the sample of interest behaviour domain (Vogt, 1999; Mertens, 1998).

In this study, questionnaires validity (face and content) and reliability were assured using selected measures, including borrowing items from previously used

questionnaires, to establish a standardised questionnaire, be it with slight adaptations to respond better in this case. Besides, the questionnaires were largely shaped by the preceding qualitative phase, i.e. interviews. This somehow can indicate that the questions used have been partially or wholly validated in the previous stage.

As Vogt (1999:301) puts it, content validity is “a matter of expert judgment”, instead of being “a statistical property”. All the versions of my questionnaires were checked by colleagues who can be considered as experts in either the medical field, or the field of ELT and AL. In more details, the questionnaires were developed in the light of comments provided by contacting language experts, and by pilot surveys in the trial process. The professionals’ questionnaire was tested through five of different

individuals, a teaching doctor, an intern, two residents and a professor of pharmacology.

According to Cohen et al. (2011), if the questionnaire wording is of paramount

importance, pre-testing is crucial to its success. Cohen et al. (ibid.) identify increasing the questionnaire reliability, validity, and practicability as principal functions achieved

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by piloting the questionnaire. Therefore, I had to ensure piloting every questionnaire and item before conducting the main study.

After contacting experts from both fields, i.e. the fields of linguistics and medicine, a pilot study was conducted to eliminate any remaining ambiguities or difficulties of understanding from the participants’ viewpoint. The revised versions were re-piloted to ensure the changes made were successful (Refer to Appendix 8.) The first version of the students’ questionnaire was piloted to a representative sample in April 2011. I

administered it to 45 first year (preparatory programme) female students. It was more convenient for me to test the questionnaire in the females’ section at the medical faculty than in the males’ section due to specific cultural boundaries (refer to Appendix 10.)

Regarding the sample size of the pilot study, I followed Rugg and Peter (2004) suggestion that, in pilot study, a sample of five to about 20 could be considered as reasonable.

Before testing, and in order to eliminate any threat to the validity and reliability of the questionnaires, I translated the questionnaires into the participants’ L1, i.e. Arabic, due to the participants’ presupposed lack of English mastery. To increase the instrument reliability, a Saudi linguist doing his PhD in the UK checked the translation. After checking the Arabic translation, I sent the questionnaires to a Saudi academician to do the back or reverse translation. After that, both questionnaires were double-checked by a friend of mine who is a teaching assistant in AL, working in SA.

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No significant feedback was returned or suggested by the participants after piloting both questionnaires. In fact, the feedback obtained from the pilot study of the first

questionnaire, the professionals group, helped revising the students’ questionnaire before piloting it. Three out of the professionals who participated in the pilot-study indicated that the questionnaire was very long. Therefore, I tried to exclude items that seemed of minor relevance to the study, in the light of the interviews, from both questionnaires. Also, I eliminated the last question in the earlier versions of both questionnaires, as it was reported to be difficult by two of the practicing doctors in the pilot study. Thus, I thought such statements might not be understandable by the students in particular. Besides, other items could substitute what this question attempted to measure. As with students, one of them questioned about the items related to the notion of English ownership. Thus, re-wording the items that investigate this issue was

considered.

4.6 Research Ethics and Access Issues

Throughout its different parts and stages, this study has made every effort to establish and maintain the highest standards of research ethics. In fact, various research manuals and guidelines that discuss research ethics, including Cohen et al., (2000 and 2007), Kent, (2000) and Mertens (1998), were consulted during the design of the study, analysis and representation of data.

First, I sought formal permission from the educational authorities of the university where the study would be conducted, in order to access its medical colleges and its students, and some medical professionals on its premises. In fact, I initiated the formal approval procedures as part of the data collection trip before conducting the interviews and distributing the questionnaire (see appendix 5.) Part of the formalities of getting

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approval for the data collection journey is to seek the approval of the sponsor in the country where the candidate does her/his degree. Thus, the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau in London was consulted first. On behalf of the researcher, the Bureau contacted the educational body where the study was eventually conducted. This formal procedure included lengthy correspondences that took four months, from November 2011 to February 2012.

Ethical considerations have a high degree of importance when any project deals with humans as its participants. Indeed, questionnaires and interviews have always been viewed as obtruding into the participants’ lives; their times are taken due to the participation, their sensitivity levels of the questions might be affected, and/or their privacy is possibly invaded (Cohen et al., 2000 and 2007; Denscombe, 2007).

If ethical concerns are important while involving humans as subjects, they are of extreme importance when any project is to approach a medical setting. Although the current study mainly took place in medical circles, it was important to stress that no patients were involved at any given moment. The entire study was carried out with medical students, and practitioners, NOT their patients. In line with the ethical principles of medical facilities’ stakeholders, gatekeeping has deliberately become a general

phenomenon within health care arena, in order to ensure that vulnerable people such as patients or their families are protected (Lee, 2005). Lee indicates that even professionals in these settings can be among vulnerable people that need to be protected when it comes to participation in research. Therefore, conducting fieldwork in health settings becomes significantly different to other domains due to the unique challenges it presents to researchers. For example, the considerable work-related pressures of these settings’ stakeholders have always constituted a challenge for researchers. (Refer to Cohen, 2007; Bishop, 2012.)

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The participants’ privacy has always been maintained nonetheless. Besides, no

threatening and/or fraudulent means to oblige the participants to be involved in the study were used whatsoever.

SA is no exception to the difficulties relating to performing fieldwork in medical settings. However, as no recording of practitioners operating in their workplaces was crucially needed at any stage, a designated permission was not necessary. The recordings of interviews, besides those conducted at the university, took place in a special convenience at a dental care unit where the participants were well informed that the interview was taking place for an academic project. In other words, Lee’s (2005) recommendations of protecting professionals were not violated. In fact, all the participants, regardless of their professional background, were protected.

As Cohen (2007:52) puts it, “voluntarism entails applying the principle of informed consent and thus ensuring that participants freely choose to take part (or not).” In order to obtain their informed consent, all interviewees, both the professionals and students, were briefed about the nature and goals of the study. Every participant was assured of his/her anonymity and privacy, and was informed that the interview would be recorded only for the research purposes. In fact, I feel indebted to the interviewees as all of them granted me their absolute permission and authorisation to independently interpret the data and present it. I offered to show them how I would interpret and transcribe their responses should they need to check how they were represented, but none of them requested to see the transcripts. Similarly, the questionnaire participants were acknowledged in advance, in the introduction to the online questionnaires, that the information collected would be used exclusively for this study, and no third party would have access to their data without their consent. They were also acknowledged that their

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consent was considered as obtained by submitting the form, i.e. by clicking the ‘submit’ button, (see appendix 2 for the questionnaire cover page.) Finally, the researcher stays confident of having represented the data as honestly and accurately as possible.