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Language of interview and mother tongue [message #30377]

Sat, 16 November 2024 07:05

Daniel Pérez
Messages: 11
Registered: May 2022

Member

Dear DHS team,

I'm Daniel, PhD student in development economics doing research on education in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I want to know how correlated is the language of interview to the mother tongue, or whether it's approximately the same. I understand that interviewers are sent to areas where their language is spoken and that this could not be the respondent's mother tongue but rather a language that both the interviewer and respondent can comfortably communicate in. However, in practical terms, do you know to what extent are both correlated?

Thanks in advance,

Daniel.

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Re: Language of interview and mother tongue [message #30395 is a reply to message #30377]

Thu, 21 November 2024 09:35

Janet-DHS
Messages: 888
Registered: April 2022

Senior Member

Following is a response from DHS staff member, Tom Pullum:

Interesting question. Looking at the 2013-14 DRC survey, the only relevant variables I see are the language of the questionnaire (sqlang), the language of the interview (slangint), and ethnicity (s114). Below I will paste two tables showing how sqlang and slangint are elated, and how s114 and slangint are related. In both tables you see that about half of the cells are virtually empty, which means that there are indeed correspondences.

The vast majority of the questionnaire were the French version, probably indicating that it was the version that the interviewers (not necessarily the respondents) were most comfortable with, but the French was the LEAST common interview language. The second table may be helpful. Ethnicity is not the same as mother tongue but is close.

. tab sqlang slangint

questionna |

ire | interview language

language | french kikongo lingala swahili tshiluba others | Total

-----------+------------------------------------------------ ------------------+----------

french | 1,069 1,519 6,023 4,524 2,165 2,071 | 17,371

kikongo | 6 171 40 1 0 26 | 244

lingala | 15 3 375 1 0 8 | 402

swahili | 14 0 32 585 1 12 | 644

tshiluba | 6 1 13 0 138 8 | 166

-----------+------------------------------------------------ ------------------+----------

Total | 1,110 1,694 6,483 5,111 2,304 2,125 | 18,827

. tab s114 slangint

| interview language

ethnicity | french kikongo lingala swahili tshiluba others | Total

----------------------+------------------------------------- -----------------------------+----------

bakongo nord & sud | 167 598 617 13 0 203 | 1,598

bas-kasai et kwilu-kw | 166 1,063 1,064 25 173 499 | 2,990

cuvette central | 37 3 1,375 10 22 352 | 1,799

ubangi et itimbiri | 65 6 1,977 23 1 127 | 2,199

uele lac albert | 242 1 1,003 337 0 48 | 1,631

basele-k , man. et ki | 88 3 97 2,869 3 121 | 3,181

kasai, katanga, tanga | 325 10 264 1,685 2,078 711 | 5,073

lunda | 10 0 8 100 23 53 | 194

pygm�e | 0 0 32 22 0 1 | 55

other | 0 0 0 0 1 0 | 1

----------------------+------------------------------------- -----------------------------+----------

Total | 1,100 1,684 6,437 5,084 2,301 2,115 | 18,721

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