Section 1: Background Information

The first section was entitled “Background information”. This set of questions is typical in participant-oriented research. It is very important so as to have an idea of who the participants are in terms of age, sex, professional categories, etc. This, in turn, helps compare results, generalize them when appropriate, and identify trends depending on certain variables.

The very first question examined the age of participants. Its main objective was to pinpoint the categories of persons present in the sample and to compare the data with other studies that were conducted, for example at national level.

In order to be systematic, continuous categories were provided, a strategy that has also been used for the design of the other questions. Indeed, as Ginette Law, from the data and design company Infoactive, advises, “[a]nswer choices should not overlap and should cover all possible options. This is called having “mutually exclusive and exhaustive” categories and is crucial for sound survey design” (Law, n.d.). Choi and Pak also advocate in favour of continuous and non-overlapping categories (2005, pp. 3-4) for sound survey design. In order to choose the interval for each age category, other surveys were consulted, including those on gamers presented in section 3.2. The following table sums up age categories offered by the consulted surveys and the categories used in ours (last column).

71 Table 7. Age categories used in various surveys

As visible in the table, there does not seem to be a set rule for defining age categories, apart from using non-overlapping ones, as mentioned earlier. The range of data collected and of each category are therefore largely dependent on the study itself, and more particularly on the information it seeks to gather. Indeed, the CNC’s consumption study inquired largely into the gaming practices of children, which is why it made sense for them to start collecting data from 6 years old and to split children and teenagers into three categories. Boulogne Billancourt’s City Hall, however, used a minimal approach by offering only four distinct categories, probably because, to them, they corresponded to marked categories which may use the city hall for different purposes. On the other hand, the French 2016 Population Census bulletin did not feature age categories but asked for the precise birthdate. This makes sense in this case since the census aims, among others, at establishing who is major and can be added to electoral lists. Yet, for our study, such degree of detail was not necessary and would even have made data harder to interpret, which is why the use of categories was more relevant. Still, given the variety of possibilities illustrated above, we have settled for an exhaustive system (meaning people of any age would be included) that did not go much into detail before majority and for the elderly but featured regular intervals in the middle (25-34, 35-44 and 45-54), taken from the above examples. The result, which can be observed in the last column of the table above, is very similar to the Sample Demographic Market Research questions provided by Amplitude Research (n.d.), only with an additional option for under 18-year-olds.

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Another typical question in questionnaires relates to gender. On top of the traditional

“male” and “female” choices, we decided to include an “undetermined” option to the gender question. For now, there is no evidence of this practice being entrenched in countries such as France: for example, the population census for 2016 by Insee only features “male” and “female”

answers. Yet, in a context of emerging minorities and increasing consideration of all types of population, some countries like Germany, Australia or India and, very recently, some States in the USA, have started to recognize the existence of an intermediate status for people whose gender is not defined at birth or changes throughout their lives. Indeed, an article in The Guardian explains that “[o]n 1 November [2013], Germany became the first country in Europe – and one of the first countries in the world – to allow the parents of babies without "clear gender-determining physical characteristics" to register them not as male or female, but to choose a third blank box instead” (Nandi, 2013). Taking into account these pioneering countries, it was thus decided to include a third option, labelled “undetermined”, to make sure all participants would feel included. This proved useful since four participants selected this option.

The next two questions focused on participants’ country of origin and country of residence. Country of origin was not understood as participants’ family origins but rather as where they were born and raised, or only raised in case they were born in a country where they did not spend their childhood. Country of residence, on the other hand, referred to the place where participants actually lived on a semi-permanent basis at the time of the survey, i.e. not for holidays. Both questions were asked since the answers may differ, which is more and more the case in a world with increasing mobility. They both held a considerable interest for the study since the linguistic features of the participants may vary, depending on where they were born and raised and where they live, attitudes towards languages being different in monolingual and multilingual countries, for instance. This may eventually influence the way they consume video games and other cultural products, as well as affect their perception of language.

The following question was closely related to these two since it concerned participants’

mother tongues. It aimed at spotting respondents for whom French was not a first language.

Indeed, the focus of the study was on native French speakers exclusively. We were also interested in knowing if respondents spoke other languages and, if so, which ones, an element that gave an insight into participants’ linguistic diversity and may partly explain their gaming habits in terms of preferred and used languages.

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Yet, analysing participants’ spoken languages is but part of the answer, since fluency is deemed to be a key-criteria. Therefore, fluency in non-native languages, and more specifically in the first foreign language and in English, was examined in order to assess whether or not the participant was able to understand enough of a foreign language to play or consume other cultural products in this language. This question helped shed light on answers provided in the following section (concerning playing in a non-native language or not).

In terms of methodology, the question of fluency was based on a self-assessment of the participant’s level, which was split up into five categories (or skills) and expressed in the form of six discrete grades ranging from A1 to C2. In order to construct this question and enable respondents to have a better idea of what each level corresponded to, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages³⁰ was used. Based on the official table for a self-assessment of skills, participants were provided with a condensed version of the table embedded in the questionnaire, so that they would know quickly where they stand. This lighter version was compiled by the researcher by keeping main characteristics for each skill and level (see Appendix 2).

30 The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages was introduced by the Council of Europe in order to harmonise foreign language learning. It is available at

https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Framework_EN.pdf (see pp. 26-27) [accessed 04 Sep. 2017]. The French version, which was used for the questionnaire design, is available at https://rm.coe.int/16802fc3a8 (see pp. 26-27) [accessed 04 Sep. 2017].

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Lastly, we sought to gather information about the participants’ educational or/and professional background, depending on their occupation. Gamers were presented with a limited yet extensive set of choices in order to make the categorization of data easier and less prone to the researcher’s subjectivity. For categories, the French and European classifications were used, namely the NAF³¹ and the NACE³². Though they have different names, they feature the exact same categories, in the same order and with the same labels. However, a slight alteration was made by adding three other categories that could prove relevant for our research: “video game industry”, “translation and interpreting” and “other (specify)”. Indeed, when scrutinizing the typologies, it seemed that the language and entertainment industries did not fit into clear boxes.

Yet, someone that works in translation would probably pay a lot more attention to language than the average gamer. In the same way, a video game developer may notice bugs or display errors that other people might not even spot. Indeed, there was a good chance that people’s backgrounds would influence what they focused on and how they focused on it. For practical reasons, i.e. to make sure these two specific categories were seen by the concerned people, they were put at the top of the scroll down list, before the NACE categories, with the “other” being typically added at the end. After having described all the questions that were used in order to better know respondents and comparing them to samples from other data, we shall inquire more precisely into participants’ experience with PC games.