The final data collected was 200 questionnaire surveys. Compared to the interview, the self-completed questionnaire had the following advantages:
• Cheaper. Interviews can be expensive. When there is a large sample to investigate, questionnaires are much cheaper in time and money. 200 participants were involved in the questionnaire survey, almost 190 online. Compared with the interviews which involved the cost of travel and telephone, there were no huge cost in the questionnaire survey except for a little financial rewards to the participants.
• Quicker. Interviews are usually more expensive in terms of the time they take up. It would take a long time to conduct individual interviews with a sample of over a hundred people. However, 200 questionnaires can be sent out through the internet or in paper form at the same time. It only took three minutes on average for each participant to finish my questionnaire.
answers given by the respondents. The questionnaires are all completed by the respondents themselves, and so interviewer effects are eliminated. Sudman and Bradburn (1982) also suggest that ‘questionnaires work better than personal interviews when a question carries the possibility of such bias.’ Moreover, as Tourangeau and Smith (1996) point out, for sensitive issues such as sexual partners, drug use or abortion, compared with interview, self-completed questionnaires can help to reduce anxiety and the respondents tend to report more. Respondents don’t face the problems of the researcher asking the questions in different ways or orders. However, the questionnaire in my research did not entirely avoid researcher effects since the respondents knew basic information about the researcher at the beginning of the questionnaire form, which could cause a different response to an anonymous questionnaire.
• Convenience. Compared with interview, the questionnaire is more convenient for respondents since they can answer the questions whenever and wherever they want and at any speed they want to go at. (Bryman, 2012)
3.2.5.1 Questionnaire design
Based on the results of the first and second stages’ data analysis, I sorted out the 18 English learning strategies most frequently used by the interviewees and 1 current English learning difficulty most frequently mentioned by the interviewees. I put all these 19 items in my questionnaire (see appendix 4). Each statement objectively
describes one specific aspect of the students’ English learning. The 19 items all developed from the first and second stage interview data analysis. I used a five point scale: 1. Never or almost never true of me, 2. Usually not true of me, 3. Somewhat true of me, 4. Usually true of me 5. Always or almost always true of me, as the choice of answers to each statement to investigate the students’ opinions or feelings about a particular issue. However, the inherent problem of the points in Likert-Scaled questionnaires should also be noted. The scale points cannot be precisely defined or the ‘distance’ between each point measured. Ambiguity in the questionnaire items' wording can cause further interpretation problems for learners with different understandings of how usual is usually in my questionnaire. As Gao (2004: 7) states,
‘The vagueness of wording has been another persistent problem in using questionnaires in LLS research such that different interpretations of instructions such as often and usually may have caused the learners to produce different answers to the questionnaire at different times.’
Gu, Wen and Wu (1995) recommend other research methods, for example interview or observation, be used to corroborate the findings from a questionnaire survey to overcome such problems in local research contexts.
19 five-point scaled items, there were 2 open profile questions concerning the respondents’ subjects and how long they had been in the UK, to find any correlation between these two factors and their strategy use. According to Cohen et al. (2011), the respondents may be unwilling to think and write answers if there are too many open questions, however, the questionnaire may lack coverage or authenticity if only closed questions are used. Therefore, my questionnaire ended with an optional open question asking the respondents to share any English learning strategies that may not have been mentioned in the questionnaire to ensure authenticity (see appendix 4). According to Nemoto & Beglar (2014), items should be written in ‘a language that the respondents understand well or that is their native language.’ I ensured the respondents immediately and accurately understood the meaning of each item expressed in mother tongue Chinese language instead of English. A poor understanding of the meaning of an item can lead to inaccurate responses that will reduce validity and reliability. The questionnaire was designed in Chinese to allow the Chinese students to easily understand it and all the questions are laid out on one page to ensure the respondents found them easy and quick to answer.
3.2.5.2 Piloting the questionnaire
Piloting the questionnaire had several functions, principally to increase its validity and reliability and the practicality (Oppenheim, 1992). As suggested by Cohen et al. (2011), there is a need to pilot questionnaires to refine the contents, length and wording, etc. to make the questionnaire appropriate to the targeted respondents. I
conducted 3 pilot questionnaire surveys and made amendments according to the respondents’ suggestions to ensure each item was clearly worded and the respondents were satisfied with the layout as well as to ensure the online link worked well. More specifically, I piloted my questionnaire according to the following guidelines: to check the clarity of the questionnaire instructions and items, to check the time taken for the respondents to complete the questionnaire was within three minutes to ensure the respondents kept their concentration and interest when completing the questionnaire, to check readability levels for the target respondents and avoid difficulties in wording. I also needed feedback on the layout, type of question and format (e.g. open questions, rating scale) in order to delete irrelevant and redundant wording, and identify omissions and finally to check all the items were understandable by the respondents, identify any over complex items.
3.2.5.3 Returns
The respondents were all 2014-2015 Chinese Master students studying in the UK (see details for sampling strategy in section 3.2.1). I sent the questionnaire link through Chinese friends’ recommendations, I used Warwick University’s advanced people search to get to find the 2014-2015 Chinese Masters’ students email addresses and politely invited them to complete my questionnaire survey. I also sent my questionnaire link to Warwick Chinese Master’s students’ online chat groups. To encourage more responses, every respondent could get 5 RMB as a reward. 197 returns came from the online questionnaire survey, 3 returns on paper. I sent out 500
online questionnaires, so the return rate was around 40%, and I sent out 5 paper questionnaires, so the return rate was 60%. In total, I sent 505 questionnaires out and got 200 back. The total return rate was 39.6%.