ABSTRACT
Questionnaires have long been seen as useful methods to research a wide range of topics and are often used in market research contexts to find out people’s views on a given product or range of services or in political arenas to find out the range of opinions held by a chosen group of people. They are useful in applied linguistic research if the intention is to find out about people’s attitudes to language change or to the target language being learnt; to the teaching and learning methods used in their second language learning classes; to discover different motivations for learning or for using a second language; to explore which languages are being used in a certain geographical area or in a particular business organization; to gather information about cultural beliefs or practices. Questionnaires are usually presumed to be in a written format (whether electronic-or paper-based) but many of the points made here will apply equally to oral interviews and to focus group discussions.
