Language Section

Hi all!

I just want to talk about the language section about the participant's level of English comprehension. This is an upper level psychology course and to be able to enroll into this course it requires the students to meet psychology prereqs, and these psychology prereqs usually requires a pretty good level of interpretation and understanding of English. Furthermore UBC students are required to pass the LPI and the LPI is a measurement of one's English proficiency so I think we can safely establish that we all have a pretty good level of English comprehension. I understand that there are variations in everyone’s English comprehension however the survey was designed in pretty simple English and I don’t think people had a lot of problems understanding it. Even if there are individuals that had problems completing the surveys I believe that to be a very small number so maybe we can mention it in some other parts of the survey and not dedicate a major section about it.

I could be wrong! Let me know what you guys think!

Hi!

I personally don't agree with you just because from personal experience, I disagree that being in an upper level psychology course means that ones's English proficiency is at a good level of understanding. I'm not trying to make assumptions that people in this class do not have a high level of English proficiency; I'm merely stating that I agree with the contributor(s) ideas that English comprehension could have been a possible factor and what you consider to be "simple English" may not be interpreted the same way by other classmates. The contributor(s) did specifically mention that this limitation might only be pertaining to several questions that have words/terms with suggested connotations - and not the whole study in general. The two points listed in the section were written up by different people which means that this issue was considered to be a limitation by more than one person and should probably be treated as a possibility.

Although there were some evident limitations in this study, there are others mentioned on this page that are just possibilities and may or may not have made much impact even if they were corrected; these factors have as good of a chance of being a limitation as not. In any case, I do believe that English comprehension being a factor in this study is a possibility but again, this is just my personal opinion and I'd love to see others reply too! :)

I really do sincerely apologize if my reply is interpreted in any sort of offensive way!

Hey! I agree with Spkwong. The fact that this is an upper level psychology course does not automatically mean that all students are familiar with the connotations behind certain terms that were used in the questionnaire. Whether or not all students in PSYC305 have high English proficiency, I think it is important to note that English comprehension could have been a factor in the way that some people answered the questionnaire. Better to point out all the possible limitations than to miss one, right?

I think you are all correct. There is nobody in the class with really bad English skills - they wouldn't have been able to get past the LPIs if they did. On the other hand, it makes sense that there are varying levels of english proficiency in this class. As well as being something that might have affected people's responses, it might have been an issue with some of the question development as well.