Research Methodology of Impacts of Bilingualism

Research methodology
3.1 Target Population
3.2 Sampled Population
3.3 Sampling Technique
3.4 Planned Sample
3.5 Actual Sample
3.6 Difficulties Encountered in the Survey
3.7 Time Horizon
3.8 Data Collection Tool
3.9 Questionnaire Content
3.10 Data Analysis Procedure
3.10.1 Data Entry
3.10.2 Analysis of Data
3.11 Ethical Considerations
3.12 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
3.12.1 Inclusion Criteria
3.12.2 Exclusion Criteria

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 Research Methodology:

Questionnaire was made as a main instrument to obtain the desired data. Stratified random sampling, sampling

and been convenient sampling techniques were used in determining which subjects to be included in the survey.

In order to analyze the data, descriptive statistics was used as a method. Moreover, chi-square test was also done

to delineate the significance of the results for some selected questions.

3.1 Target Population:

The target population was graduate and post-graduate students studying in universities of Lahore. Students have

been chosen as a target population because the goal of the research was to identifying the attitude of youth

towards Urdu language. Also, as per African Youth Charter “youth” means “every person between the ages of

15 and 35 years, therefore, this age group has been considered as youth in this particular study. Other reasons of

choosing students as target population are:

i. They are mature enough to understand the significance of their responses.

ii. As the questionnaire is in English, therefore, their understanding of the questionnaire would be better

than their counterparts. If respondents were chosen other than the students, it would have become

necessary to translate the questionnaire otherwise.

iii. Another major reason of choosing students of Lahore is that Lahore is the hub of post-graduate

studies. Hence, for a researcher it is a better representative sample of the desired topic of research

belong to different urban as well as rural areas of the country. It may enable the researcher to

generalize the results of the study to the literate youth of Punjab.

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3.2 Sampled population:

The elements were drawn from the sample and the the data was collected from two public sector universities;

The University of Punjab, The University of Engineering & Technology and three private sector universities:

University of Management and Technology, Lahore and The University of Lahore.

3.3 Sampling Technique:

All the universities of Lahore were divided into two strata i.e. Public Sector Universities and Private Sector

Universities using Stratified Random Sampling Technique. Then from these two strata s, two public sector

universities and two private sector universities were randomly chosen for employing random sampling

technique. The form these four universities, participants were randomly chosen employing convenient sampling

technique. Moreover, from each of the four public sector universities, the researcher planned to choose more

than 25 respondents and similarly from each of two private sector universities, the researcher planned to choose

more than 20 respondents from each university.

3.4 Planned sample:

As it has been mentioned earlier that more than 25 respondents were respectively planned to be chosen from

each of the two public and two private sector universities, therefore, the planned sample was more than 20

respondents from each cluster. This depicts that the total planned sample size was 140 respondents.

3.5 Actual Sample:

As per planning 40 questionnaires each were distributed in chosen public sector universities and 30

questionnaires each were distributed in the selected private sector universities. Total 72 completely filled

questionnaires from public universities were included in the survey out of 35 from UET and 37 questionnaires

from PU. Similarly, total 46 thoroughly filled questionnaires were included in the analysis from the chosen

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private sector universities out of which 19 were from UMT and 25 from UOL. Therefore, the actual size was

116. Therefore, the response rate is 83%.

3.6 Difficulties Encountered in the Survey:

Non-response and mall-response is a major difficulty that the researcher encountered with in research. Few of

the respondents did not fill up the questionnaire completely. So, half-filled questionnaires were excluded from

the data in order to report the accurate results. Therefore, in order to ensure the reliability of the results, such

questionnaires with mal-responses were excluded from the analysis. Thus, the excluded questionnaires were 24

in number.

3.7 Time horizon:

It was a cross-sectional study as the data collection was done at one specific point in time;

3.8 Data collection Tool:

An individual questionnaire was designed to collect data from the participants of the study. The questionnaire

contained two types of close-ended questions. Duan (2004) has been a great reference in designing the research

tool for this study.

After the questionnaire was designed, 15 respondents were randomly chosen for pilot test before conducting the

survey on a larger scale. Later, the questionnaire was revised considering the feedback of the respondents, the

results obtained and researcher’s own observations.

3.9 Questionnaire content:

The questionnaire consists of six demographic questions which were asked to establish the background

information of the respondents such as age, education, gender, university, mother tongue and educational field.

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Then, the questionnaire has been divided into three parts and each part has its own focus. Part I has a focus upon

identifying the basic language skills in three languages Punjabi, Urdu and English.

Part II has been specifically designed to tap the attitude of the respondents towards Punjabi language. The

questions are designed about the usage of the language with different type of people. Their language preference

is checked by their usage of language in that situation. Five options were given for the answer three pure

languages Punjabi, Urdu and English were given as an option and two bilinguals or code switch s Urdu+English

and Urdu+Punjabi were given as an option for 23 questions in this part to give the relevant answers.

Part III focuses on discovering the attitude of subjects towards Punjabi speakers. This part comprises of 34

hypothetical situations in which the respondents have been asked to respond about the usage or attitude towards

language according to situation. Likert scale has been utilized to design 34 questions for this part. The

respondents have been asked to rate their level of agreement on a scale from 1 to 5 wherein 1 represents highest

level of agreement and 5 represents the lowest level agreement.

3.10 Data Analysis Procedure:

3.10.1 Data entry:

All the data were entered in SPSS spreadsheet (SPSS version 16) Variables were first defined and the options

provided for each questions were coded. Then, the responses of the subjects were entered in the spreadsheet in

coded form. Along with SPSS, All the worksheets were counter-checked to minimize the possibility of error.

3.10.2 Analysis of Data:

i) SPSS (version 16) was used to analyze the data. All the variables were separately analyzed and

the relevant percentage charts and tables were obtained in the output sheet.

ii) Before computing individual’ total scores, the negatively keyed-items Likert scale (from part ii)

were reverse coded. Reverse coding was done so that high scores on the questionnaire reflect

relatively high levels of the attribute being measured by the questionnaire.

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 iii) Chi-square tests were also used to check the dependency of one variable over other. Therefore,

five hypotheses were tested to identify the relationship between selected variables.

iv) The arithmetic mean which is defined as the sum of the scores divided by the number of scores

was also used to find out the mean of language use in various domains and the mean of language

attitudes of the participants. These arithmetic means were calculated using formulas in MS

EXCEL sheet.

3.11 Ethical Considerations:

Following ethical considerations were kept while conducting this study:

i. Respondents were not pressurized to fill up the questionnaire.

Identify of all the respondents and individuals who took part in this Profile of the respondents:

No. of respondents Public Sector University

i. 35 Students The University of Engineering & Technology,
Lahore
ii. 37 students University of Punjab, Lahore
Total Respondents 72 Total Universities :2
Table 3.1

No. of Respondents Private Sector University

i. 19 Students University of Management and Technology,
Lahore
ii. 25 Students University of Lahore, Lahore
Total Respondents 44 Total Universities: 2
Table 3.2

3.12 Inclusion and exclusion criteria:

3.12.1 Inclusion criteria:

The inclusion criteria chosen for research study is as follow;

i. All the students enrolled in selected public sector universities of Lahore which include:
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 a. University of Engineering & Technology

b. University of the Punjab

ii. All the students enrolled in three selected private sector universities of Lahore which include:

a. University of Management and Technology

b. The University of Lahore

3.12.2 Exclusion Criteria:

The exclusion criteria chosen for this study is as follow.

Students from rest of the universities of Lahore