LEQ administration
The LEQ, or Language Exposure Questionnaire, is an interview-style questionnaire administered by the researcher to the parent. Detailed information about parents' language backgrounds and language strategies with their children is collected, as well as a thorough day-in-the-life estimate of their child's lifetime exposure to different languages.
Training example videos for administering the LEQ can be found on the Lab Server under Lab > Testing > LEQ Training.
Digital LEQ on Qualtrics
the LEQ has been digitized in Qualtrics. The link for the digital LEQ is here.
Administration
The researcher will access the LEQ either from a computer or an iPad in the lab, and set up the first page information before meeting with the parent. The administration is similar to the paper questionnaire.
Longitudinal Administration
Longitudinal LEQ administration is a bit more complicated. The first instance of the LEQ will be exactly as described elsewhere on this page. Any subsequent longitudinal administrations of the LEQ for the same study must be done in the following way:
A researcher with access to the back end of the LEQ questionnaire must log into Qualtrics, navigate to the survey, and then navigate to the "Data & Analysis" tab.
Use the "Add a filter" button to find the study ID you are looking for, by choosing "study_id" from the "Select choice" dropdown, then clicking the little arrow beside this and choosing "is", then typing in the study ID you are looking for. The list of results should narrow down, and if you need to specify the study name as well, do so in the same way by clicking the plus sign to add another filter.
Find the most recent LEQ administration for that study ID, then hover over the three dots on the right-hand side of the row, and choose "Retake as New Response". This is *very important*. You absolutely must make sure to choose "Retake as New Response", and not "Retake Response." You also absolutely must make sure to do so from the most recent LEQ administration. Otherwise, the data will not be correct. Double check this.
A popup will appear with the longitudinal link. This link is only valid for one specific study ID. Do not send this link to anyone other than the participant who filled out the previous LEQ from the row where you created the link.
You must do this every time you want to administer a new longitudinal LEQ, creating the links administration by administration, participant by participant, individually, always making sure to create the link from the most recently completed LEQ.
Downloading the data
For detailed instructions, see this page. To download the LEQ data for a specific study, someone with administrative privileges in Qualtrics must log in and go to the "Data & Analysis" tab. From there, you can filter results by study. To do so, click the "Add a Filter" button and set the condition to the field study_name being equal to the study you are interested in.
Cleaning the data
There is an R script specifically designed to clean the LEQ data from Qualtrics (this is in progress Feb 2023). This script selects only the important variables and makes the naming of them consistent. It can also extract specific types of information, either related to parent language strategies (first half of the LEQ) or summarized language estimates (second half of the LEQ). The script will be put on the lab server once it is complete.
January 2023: Administrative decisions
Some decisions had to be made to facilitate moving the questionnaire from paper to digital. These are documented here:
A maximum of 4 different languages can be entered into the day-in-a-life estimate
The default order of languages is: L1 = English, if either parent speaks English; French, if no parent speaks English but either parent speaks French; caregiver 1's Other Language 1 if neither parent speaks English or French. L2 = French, if either parent speaks French and English is already L1; English or French, if daycare language is English or French and that language is not already L1; otherwise caregiver 1's Other Language 1 or caregiver 1's Other Language 2. L3 = caregiver 1's Other Language 1 or caregiver 1's Other Language 2 or caregiver 2's Other Language 1 or caregiver 2's Other Language 2. L4 = caregiver 1's Other Language 1 or caregiver 1's Other Language 2 or caregiver 2's Other Language 1 or caregiver 2's Other Language 2
In cases where there are 4 languages spoken to the child AND all 4 languages end up with a percent of hours that ends in .5 after averaging the cumulative exposure with the parent estimate (for example, 30.5% English, 25.5% French, 15.5% Spanish and 12.5% German), then the total will end up being 102% because .5 rounds up. This is okay, and will only ever happen in a small number of cases with 4 languages as described above.
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