Abstract：Demography of Language is an inter-disciplinary research area that draws on the methodology and data of demography as well as sociology and linguistics. Its basic methodology is survey based and it relies on data collected by means of censuses of population and large-scale surveys. Despite the widespread use of language-related census and survey data in research and policy studies, their methodological underpinnings have not been systematically evaluated. In this paper, it is argued that census agencies, when they chose to include sociolinguistic topics in their questionnaires, use their own ad hoc measures, and provide little description of how they were developed. Problems arising from the variable wording, format or response categories of language related questions in censuses call into question the reliability and validity of data collected with census methods. The objective of this paper is to investigate the way in which respondents are influenced by the way language proficiency questions in censuses are shaped and worded in a large set of censuses relating to one language (Irish) in the Republic of Ireland and the Northern Ireland region of the UK. The analysis draws on earlier research on this topic, but expands the analytical scope of previous work by applying the theoretical insights of recent methodological advances in social research and applied linguistic research.
作者简介: 帕特里克·ó.雷根（Pádraig ó Riagáin），男，爱尔兰都柏林三一学院荣誉教授，主要研究方向为语言调查研究、语言人口学、语言规划和政策分析、小族语言。
引用本文:
帕特里克·ó.雷根. 人口普查中语言水平数据的测定问题[J]. 语言战略研究, 2019, 4(6): 42-54.
Pádraig ó Riagáin. Measurement Issues with Language Proficiency Data in Censuses of Population. , 2019, 4(6): 42-54.
