Forschungsmethodische Herausforderungen in der Mehrsprachigkeitsforschung: am Beispiel eines longitudinalen Verbundprojekts mit bilingualen Jugendlichen

This article presents a research project that focuses on the holistic assessment of linguistic competences of bilingual adolescents – both in their heritage language (Russian or Polish) and in German, the language of the environment – and also takes into account foreign languages learned at school. In addition to extensive surveys of language proficiency, the perceptions of the young people, their parents and teachers, on language use in the family, bilingual education, attitudes towards multilingualism and teaching in the heritage language were collected in guided interviews. In line with the dynamic model of multilingualism (Herdina/Jessner 2002), the study was carried out in a joint project as a longitudinal investigation over a period of four years at three different locations (Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig). The paper discusses the time-consuming and resource-intensive multilingual study design with different test administrators for the languages studied as well as the development of special survey instruments for multilinguals.