The completed questionnaire slips were collected and labelled with the appropriate class identification.
Identification will be used to determine which version of the video clip the children saw, as well as what grade they represent (NA, representing Nordic Agapio dub with translated names, and GV, representing Golden Voice dub with non-translated names). The data was transferred to a computer via Excel to further simplify the analytic processing, with respondent assigned arbitrary identification numbers 1 through 13 for both groups.
The children were also asked to fill out their age and tick the appropriate box for native language. Native language options are Finnish, English and Other. Finnish and English are explicitly asked because an English speaking child may understand the allusions in descriptive names that are lost to their non-English speaking peers. Other is included because being a native speaker of neither Finnish nor English may also affect the child’s ability to understand alluded qualities as well as provide them with a limited vocabulary in Finnish.
Personal data that will be utilized contains the respondents’ age and native language. Sex is included in the personal data, but will only be utilized if a trend can be determined to be affected by respondents’
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sex. Thusly the responses do not contain any significant personal data and cannot be reliably traced to any one single child. Further data such as respondents’ names are not included. This is done to protect the children’s privacy all the while keeping track of essential research data.
For the free association portion of the questionnaire, the data is submitted and explored in Microsoft Excel to interpret and categorize the answers. Both the quality as well as the frequency of words is looked at. This data will also be used to make interpretations on how well they resonate with what would be the assumed allusions of a given name, as well as appropriate characterizations based on character behavior.
Assumed allusions or characterizations will be discussed in the analysis chapter to better maintain a clear image of the results.
Allusions will be looked at in the form of a free association task where the participants are asked to describe characters they saw in the video with a few descriptive words. Three response lines have been assigned so as not to overwhelm the children. I will be looking at the types of words that are used (whether they are externally descriptive such as color, or implicitly such as temperament). I will also look at whether descriptive name will result in repetitions in descriptions (i.e. if Sweetheart will result in answers such as ‘sweet’ or variant of the word).
A free association task is also provided where the participants are requested to give a name to a previously unnamed character. The purpose of this task is to discover what kind of tools the children employ in naming the character and if they are in correspondence with My Little Pony personal name conventions (whether the name is conventional or descriptive, and if it alludes to implicit or explicit qualities). It is also used to measure whether language context of other names in the episode has effect on how children choose to name their character.
Multiple choice answers will be looked at separately to determine trends and frequency (or, accuracy) in character name recall. Data will be submitted through Excel sheets to determine frequency of blanks, accuracy in terms of correct and incorrect answers, as well as sort through appropriate data to provide further insight into the quantitative aspects of this survey. It can also be debated whether it is the character itself or the name that is being recognized and recalled, however that may warrant a very different type of research not suitable within the confines of this study.
Recognition questions ask the participants to spell out the character name. Blank answers are valid, and will be explored in the analysis chapter to determine possible causes for lack of answer. The participants
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are also asked to join a name and a character with an extra name included to determine whether the children remember and/or can make the connection based on other qualities (character name and cutie mark are corresponding in both versions of the questionnaire).
The completed questionnaires will likely not be made public to ensure participant anonymity. Partial questionnaire results are included in no specific respondent order.
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6 Results and analysis
In this chapter the data collected from the questionnaire responses is presented. This chapter looks at some of the key elements that arose from the questionnaire as well as provides further qualitative analysis into results collected from the free association tasks included. Name recall will be subject to both quantitative and qualitative analyses, and will be the first point of discussion. The results of the analysis will be discussed in detail at the end of this chapter and revisited briefly in the concluding chapter.
The results are divided between a quantitative portion (name recognition tasks) as well as a qualitative portion (free association tasks). They will be discussed chronologically in this order for clarity and coherence with the questionnaire survey construct.
It should be noted that the number of respondents was lower than originally anticipated and as such the data cannot be used to more than making broad generalizations.