Examining the reliability and validity of bilingual language use and switching measures
DOI: 10.1017/s1366728926100996
archive: archived pipeline: cataloged verified
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Summary
This paper addresses the critical need to validate measures of bilingual language use and switching, which are frequently used to study individual differences in executive control and language processing. While self-report questionnaires are common, their reliability and validity have been insufficiently examined, particularly against objective behavioral data. The author presents two studies to evaluate the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (LSBQ) for language use and various switching measures against ecological benchmarks. Study 1 examined the test–retest reliability and validity of the LSBQ relative to Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA). Six5 bilingual participants completed the LSBQ twice (one week apart) and reported their language use five times daily for five days via EMA. The results indicated high test–retest reliability for the LSBQ, with most items showing moderate-to-high correlations between sessions. Validity analyses revealed moderate correlations between LSBQ scores and EMA data, suggesting the questionnaire effectively captures daily-life language use patterns. The study also found that single-item questions regarding general language use correlated moderately with EMA data, though the comprehensive LSBQ provided a more detailed assessment. Study 2, a smaller-scale investigation, assessed the validity of language-switching questionnaires and tasks against recorded daily-life conversations. The findings suggested relatively low validity for most language-switching questionnaires when compared to actual conversational data. In contrast, short language-production tasks demonstrated potentially higher validity as assessments of switching behavior. This indicates that while self-reports may capture general tendencies, they lack precision in quantifying specific switching frequencies compared to objective production tasks. The significance of this research lies in its confirmation that tools exist to reliably capture bilingual language use with a certain degree of validity, specifically supporting the utility of the LSBQ. However, the low validity of switching questionnaires highlights a methodological gap, suggesting that researchers should prioritize short production tasks or EMA for assessing language switching. These findings encourage more rigorous measurement practices in bilingualism research to ensure that individual differences in language behavior are accurately captured and linked to cognitive processes.
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| Stage | Outcome | Tool | Model | Prompt | Attempts | Completed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| discover | success | Crossref | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-17 |
| archive | success | canonical_url | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-25 |
| extract | success | cached | — | — | 2 | 2026-06-26 |
| clean | success | clean | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| chunk | success | chunk | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| embed | success | embed | Qwen/Qwen3-Embedding-8B | — | 1 | 2026-06-18 |
| promote | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-17 |
| summarize | success | llm | qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant | summ-v5 | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
| tag | success | vector_similarity | — | — | 6 | 2026-06-18 |
| verify | success | — | — | — | 1 | 2026-06-26 |
Summary generated by qwen3.6-27b-prismaquant on 2026-06-26; verification: verified.
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- Methodological Resource: validation psychometrics