To analyze the relationship between the number of teachers talking in class and children's language ability in different kindergarten classes, you can use statistical methods that assess correlation and regression. Here are two approaches you can consider:

Here's a basic outline of how to approach the analysis:

Keep in mind that the quality of the analysis depends on the quality of the data, the appropriateness of the assumptions, and the interpretation of the results. It's also crucial to consider potential confounding variables, like the children's age or socioeconomic status, which may influence their language abilities. Jiayao Ye

Hi Jiayao,

first of all : do you want to study the number of words produced (token) or the number of different words produced (types) ?

for example, in the following sentence :

"a child eats a carrot and a child eats an apple"

there are 11 words, but the number of different words (excluding repetitions) is 7, and the type/token ratio is 7/11 = 0,64

it could be useful to obtain descriptive statistics ( mean, standard deviation, min, max) for each teacher and/or each class (according to the level of the analysis you want to focus on) and then do inferential statistics to check whether the teachers' words influence children development

Do your data come from different samples collected over a time span ? Usually studies on child development cover a given time period

a free and easy-to-use statistical software could be JASP

Set up the multiple linear regression model with children's language ability as the dependent variable and the number of words spoken by teachers in each class as independent variables.

Example: LanguageAbility i=β0​+β1​WordsSpokenClass1i​+β2​WordsSpokenClass2i​+…+βn​WordsSpokenClassni​+ϵi​

i represents each individual child.