Processing Data for DARE: Current Practices

Abstract

HE BACKGROUND, scope, and aims of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE) have been described in detail elsewhere.l Here, I shall concentrate on the methods that have been and are being used to process the large amount of data collected for DARE, the changes that have been made in these methods, and the ways in which they allow the data to be presented. 1. The first section of DARE to be completed will be the Data Summary, which consists of computer-made tabulations of the information collected by DARE fieldworkers. This information includes the questions asked, the responses given, the relative frequency of each response, and tabulations of the code numbers, ages, and educational levels of the informants giving each response. The Data Summary will be an editorial tool for the DARE staff in the preparation of the word list (the conventional dictionary). After the Data Summary is prepared, a computer-made index will enable the editors to locate any word given as a response to the questions in the Questionair, to judge its regionality from the Data Summary tabulations and from an on-line computer mapping program that should be functioning by the summer of 1975, and to include a reference to it in the word list. The present plan is to make the statistical information in the Data Summary available to scholars by means of microfiche, the only feasible way to present the equivalent of 90,000 pages of computer printout. Lists of the questions, the responses, and the relative frequency of the responses will be published as a part of DARE, probably as a separate volume. The working title for this volume is the Response List. It will provide a type of