The Second, International Testing of an Experimental, Cross-National Version of a Questionnaire on the Readers' Backgrounds in the 'Folktale Project.' Folktale: A Cross-Cultural Interdisciplinary Study of the Experience of Literature. Paper 11.

A study examined how the third version of a questionnaire on readers' backgrounds (developed for the "Folktale project", which explores similarities and dissimilarities in the response to literature from and in different cultures) fared internationally under field conditions which would not immediately be controlled by members of the project. Subjects, 20 Indian readers, 50 readers in the United Kingdom and 28 Nigerian readers, completed the questionnaire. The subjects' answers were examined to make sure that the questions elicited the "same information" cross culturally--that specific answers (and the phenomena they probed) were comparable between cultures, and yet independent of the significance attached to them in specific cultures. Results indicated that the questionnaire developed was sufficiently effective for sound statistical analyses in the final data collection round in the Folktale project. (Instructions to subjects, the third and fourth versions of the questionnaire, and an overview of the Folktale project as of March, 1989 are attached.) (RS)