Survey validation

[philena.livejournal.com]

For my dissertation research, I'm examining whether the probability of a particular morpheme's occurrence affects its pronunciation. I'm hoping to use Russian as my study language, because Russian has many situations in which it is possible for a verb to show either singular or plural agreement (много стульев стоялИ/О за столом). In order to investigate this, however, I need to know exactly how to measure the likelihood of getting singular or plural agreement, and for that reason I've constructed a norming study. Unfortunately, I do not speak Russian natively, or even particularly well, and so I'd like some native Russian speakers to run through the surveys that I've created and point out any problem spots. (The stimuli have all been spot-checked by a Russian-speaker already, so they shouldn't be too horrible.) That is where you come in! Would the native Russian speakers among you be willing to help me prepare these surveys? You can do it in one of two ways:


1. I've created six different lists (using the AMAZING form option on Google docs). Your brains will bubble if you try to do all of them, so please just choose your favorite color and run through the sentences on it. I would also be very happy if you filled in the blanks for the sentences you find, although I'm more concerned with finding problem spots than getting pilot data. If there are problems, you can tell me in the comments below. Please be sure to mention the list color and exactly what the problem is.

red
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yellow
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(dark) blue
purple



2. I need to come up with written instructions. Although I will be studying the particular form  that the verb takes, I'd rather not make people think too much about it. (I might add filler sentences where people are asked to fill in nouns or prepositions or adjectives in similar sentences, although I've not included them here.)  For that reason, I'd also like to include a word-association task in between each sentence. I've written sample instructions below. They are probably Very Bad. Could you please correct them? They do not need to sound all formal. They simply need to sound natural, so that people know what the task is.

Russian Instructions:
Вы будете видеть два типа заданий: заполнение предложений и [word-association--I have no idea how to describe this concept in Russian]. В каждом предложении заполните пропуски словами данными в скобках. Потом прочитайте следующее слово и напишите первое слово, которое появляется у Вас в голове. Например:

Стул __ (стоять) у окна
(Вы пишите): стоял


дверь
(Вы пишите:): лис

Intended Instructions:
You will see two types of task: sentence-completion and word-association. In each sentence, please fill in the blanks using the word provided in parentheses. Then read the following word and write down the first word that comes to mind. For example:

The chair __ (stand) by the window
(You write:) stood

door
(You write:) fox

Thank you very much for any help you can provide.

Comments

[orie.livejournal.com]

In the present I'll use "дают", also a singular for