ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the use that can be made of more or less simple counting techniques by language teachers doing research. It also gives some background to those techniques to harness the considerable power of numerical analysis in describing and interpreting many kinds of data. Numerical data is usually associated with a positivist, normative approach, but numerical methods also have their place in qualitative research. The important principle is that the researcher needs to be in control of the interpretation and can only accepting the statistical advice that he or she can use in that interpretation. Mostly, interpretation of correlations means looking for other factors which might be influencing both sets of results. The chapter explains four levels of measurement that are nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio scales. It is, of course, highly debatable whether the kinds of data collected in language-teaching research are measurement in any useful sense anyway.
