Introduction to Experimental Linguistics

6Practical Aspects for Designing an Experiment

In this chapter, we take you step by step through the different practical aspects of designing an experiment, as well as the resources needed for every stage. We first see how to look for scientific sources and access the bibliographic resources required for developing the research question. We then return to the conceptualization and formulation of the research question and the operational hypotheses. The different stages involved in building the experiment itself will then be described one after the other. We primarily address the choice of experimental design and the constraints linked to the different types of design, before discussing the key aspects of experiments in linguistics: the linguistic items used in the experiment. We then describe the different stages which mark out the typical course of an experiment, and discuss the ethical principles that have to be respected while conducting experiments on human participants.

6.1. Searching scientific literature and getting access to bibliographic resources

The first crucial step in the implementation of experimental research is the definition of the research question. It is from this definition that all the subsequent stages will ensue: the choice of method, the observed indicators, the experimental design, the linguistic material employed and finally statistical analyses. This is why it is necessary to devote time and reflection to it, in order to arrive at a well formulated ...