Legitimación de la violencia basada en género

Limitati ons of the questionnai re as a d ata co llectio n instru m e nt have been discussed in section 3 . 5 . 1 , re lating to response rates, diffe ri n g i nterp retations of questions, and the effect of social desi rability o n su bjects' responses. A n u mber of steps were take n to g uard ag ai nst a desire to give the ' rig ht' answer, but it is not e ntire ly possible to ru le this out in the case of all subjects. A fu rther limitation re lates to the q uestionnaire ite ms which , as they were p h rased , could n ot tap eve ry possible u se of a strategy such as self-manage ment. While care was take n to make t h e items as represe ntative as possible of the underlying construct , they could not d raw upon all possible instances of strategy use. Thus it is possi ble that subjects m ig ht have respo nded diffe re ntly to an ite m such as that re lati ng to se lf­ manag e m e nt if it had been rephrased , o r co ntextualised i n anothe r way.

Li mitati o n s of ve rbal report data were considered in sectio n 3 . 6 . 1 , and ag ain the possibility that learn e rs are reporting what they think they should do, rather than what they actually do can not be altog eth e r ru led out. F u rtherm o re , su bjects probably repo rted o n a particu lar subset of the strategies they used , that is, those strategies which they were conscious of at the ti me of the p roced u re . Thus, the ve rbal report data can not be seen as p roviding a compre h e nsive accou nt of the strateg i c rep e rtoi re of each languag e l earner. I n addition , the subjects may have varied c o nsiderably in the i r abi lity to talk about the strategies they use, and thus the data fo r some subjects may be much less rich and relatively i ncom plete com pared to their actual strategy use.

As Po litze r and McG roarty ( 1 985 : 1 1 8) note, g iven the number of suspici ons t hat have been raised about self- report data, this data 'should, w h e n ever possi ble, i nclude a check of the se lf-reports ag ai nst actual o bse rvatio n s' . I n thi s study it was n ot actually possible to o bse rve learn e rs wo rki ng on particu lar language tasks , d u e to limitati ons of time and access. H oweve r, it re mains a hig hly desi rable sou rce of co nfi rmation about the re liabi lity of se lf-re p o rt data.

Both quantitative and q ualitative methods we re used to gath e r data on strategy use, followi ng the p rocess of t riangu lation (Lo ng 1 983) i n an attempt to demonstrate the same findings t h roug h d iffe re nt sou rces. H owever, as Selige r and S h ohamy ( 1 9 89 : 1 05) poi nt out :

lt i s not always possi ble to collect the same second languag e data usi ng diffe re nt sources. This is especially true in studies which use learne r self- reports as data for studying strategies or m etacog nitio n. Fo r e xample, aski ng a learn er to se lf-report o r 'introspect' about a lang uag e e rro r i m mediately afte r the act and ag ain some time later is not d rawi n g o n the same source.

I n this study , the questionnai re data and the ve rbal repo rt data we re not d rawi ng on exactly the same sou rce si nce they were col lected at diffe rent times, and did not require learn e rs to think abo ut strategy use in relation to exactly the same tasks. Th us, while m u ltiple measu res were u sed, the fact that they were not di rected at exactly t he same sources is a lim itation of this study.

One fu rthe r weakness relates to the re latively small number of classroom learners co m pared to distance learn e rs who partici pated i n the yoked su bject p rocedure . T h i s was u navoidable i n that the classroom learners o f French were a small g ro u p and the classroom learn e rs of J apanese appeared diffident about participation in the procedure . Howeve r, a larg e r re prese ntation of classroom learners wou ld h ave been desirable .

3.9 SU MMARY

This chapte r has p re sented the research desi g n used to i nvestig ate the freque ncy of strategy use and i nflue nces o n the strategy use of u nderg radu ate foreign language learn e rs.

Resu lts fro m t h e analysis of the questio n n ai re data are presented in Chapter 4 and provide evidence relati ng to the research qu estions p rese nted i n section 3.3.2. Resu lts fro m the analysi s of the ve rbal report data are d etai led i n Chapter 5 , and the fi ndings shed fu rthe r light o n questions co ncerning the influence of the TL and mode of study o n the re po rted strategy use of fo reign lang uage learners.