ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a survey of the different methods by which verbal data are collected and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of each. It examines methods that typically gather numerical data and discusses how these data are judged as reliable and valid. The chapter then summarizes a number of data-collection sources that are commonly used in applied linguistic research resulting in verbal data. Observational procedures have many different formats. The chapter examines how these different formats are used by surveying the most common observational techniques with their strengths and limitations. The difference between the observer and the interviewer is that the interviewer personally interacts with the participant through a series of questions to obtain data, whereas with the observer data is collected as it occurs without probing with questions. The advantage of using instrumental procedures over observational ones is that researchers can gain access to many more participants in a timely and economical way.
