Research methods

This paper begins with the assumption that there is no perfect study. Rather, the process of conducting language acquisition research involves numerous decisions, each of which is accompanied by a set of strengths and weaknesses and which must be justified as appropriate to the substantive domain and the research questions being addressed. The chapter describes many of these choices and their corresponding benefits and drawbacks, illustrating key concepts and techniques with examples while making frequent reference to methodological issues and trends currently taking place in the field. In particular, we focus on major decisions related to (a) research designs, both descriptive/observational and (quasi-)experimental; (b) elicitation techniques and instruments for collecting data both linguistic (e.g., grammaticality judgment tasks) and non-linguistic (e.g., questionnaires) in nature; and (c) quantitative (e.g., analysis of variance) and qualitative (e.g., grounded theory) techniques for analyzing data.