Collaborative Research: Every participant counts: Investigating the impact of experimental language research on participants

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Experimental researchers in the social and behavioral sciences often interact with the public in two traditionally distinct capacities. In the act of doing science, they elicit participant responses in experimental studies to create knowledge and test hypotheses. At the same time, many researchers use their own knowledge and expertise to engage and educate the public about topics of public concern related to their science. In this project researchers explore the ways in which these two roles may be brought closer together, by treating each participant in an experimental study as an opportunity for public engagement, examining the messages (positive or negative) that participants already deduce from common experimental paradigms, and exploring the role that improved science communication methods can have on engaging and educating participants. The work has the potential to substantially increase one type of broader impact of social and behavioral research – public outreach and engagement.The researcher team centers this investigation in the field of linguistics and focuses on commonly used speaker perception tasks. In the first phase of the project, the team develops a Linguistics and Language Ideology (LLI) survey instrument designed to test the public’s standing ideas around language and the field of linguistics. In the second phase, participants complete a series of speaker perception experiments testing how responses to this survey are impacted by different methodological aspects of the experiment. Participants across the studies are debriefed using innovative and engaging techniques. The results of this project not only highlight how specific methodological choices impact participants’ understanding of language and linguistics, but also whether and how science communication with participants can mitigate any negative effects, and actively produce positive outcomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.