Dr. Nadhilla Velda Melia is a research fellow at the Centre for Lifelong Learning and Individualised Cognition (CLIC) where she investigates social factors, including multilingualism, and their effects on cognitive flexibility as part of the Social Workgroup. 

Validation of the CILD-Q for Measuring Multilingualism in Singapore 

The Contextual and Individual Linguistic Diversity Questionnaire (CILD-Q) was developed to capture a previously ignored aspect of multilingualism i.e. passive use of language through the sociolinguistic context. This aspect considers the environment in which individuals use and perceive languages and includes the linguistic knowledge that individuals gain from environmental cues in the broader society. The CILD-Q consists of three factors: Multilingualism in Context, Multilingualism in Practice, and Linguistic Diversity Promotion. The CILD-Q was originally developed based on South African and UK samples. The current research investigated the factor structure of the CILD-Q in Singapore. Singapore is a multicultural society which emphasizes the importance of being bilingual and provides an interesting multilingual environment in which to study the CILD-Q. After conducting an exploratory factor analysis of the CILD-Q on the Singapore sample, we found that the original three-factor structure of the CILD-Q did not emerge in the Singapore sample. Five items from the original questionnaire were removed and although three factors also emerged, they are not the same three factors that emerged in the original CILD-Q. The three factors that emerged in the current research can be labelled as follows: Switching in Context, Switching in Practice, and Linguistic Diversity Promotion. The retained CILD-Q items also explained much less variance in the Singapore sample (44%) compared to the original CILD-Q in the South African and UK samples (62%). We discuss the possible reasons why the CILD-Q may not be as useful for capturing multilingualism in Singapore. One possibility is that relatively high levels of multilingualism in Singapore may contribute to low variability in responses on the CILD-Q. We conclude that wider investigation of the applicability of the CILD-Q in different linguistic contexts may be needed before implementing it widely as a measure of both active and passive multilingualism.