Reading Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (2000) - The University of ...

SOCIAL NETWORKS IN A RURAL SETTING
The schoolchildren are mostly from the Huntly Academy, a state nonselective
secondary school. The selection was made as follows: all the
children falling into the two age groups were given letters by the teachers,
asking if they would participate, and those who agreed, and who obtained
permission from their parents, were interviewed. The adult informants were
accessed via network connections. This method makes use of the benefits of
association provided by network contacts (Milroy: 1988). One possible source
of skewing in the sample is of course the fact that the adult subjects were
mostly accessed via network connections, but this was offset by the fact that
the research assistant’s network contacts were also brought into play. The
adult sample is therefore not as ‘random’ as the child sample, which consists
mostly of recordings made at the local school, where the author had no control
over the choice of subject.
7. Statistical Analysis
7.1. Correlations and Plots
It was decided that, because the data is continuous, the only effective tests
would be firstly correlations and then multiple (linear) regression, and these
have been used throughout 11 . The aim of the data analysis is to see if any of
the social variables are correlated with any of the linguistic ones (or in fact
with any of the other social variables). This will help answer the research
question related to the significance of life modes and social networks as
predictors of language change in rural areas.
As a first measure, Pearson’s correlation tests and plots were used to see
which variables might be related to each other. More rigorous testing was
done later at the model building stage, using multiple regression. Correlation
shows if two variables tend to vary together (positive correlation), or to vary
in opposite directions (negative correlation). Showing such a correlation does
not, however, mean that one variable is the cause of the variation in the other.
The variation may be caused by a third variable. In order to test rigorously
whether one variable is causing another to vary, one must use regression. This
will show which variable is the predictor, and which the response. A
regression analysis is like the numerical representation of a scatter plot, and
the regression line is a straight line through the middle of the data points, one
11 This was in consultation with the Applied Statistics Advisory Service at the University of Reading.
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