No, feel free to also consider majority languages. Various possibilities come to mind, e.g., targeting a particular dialect of a majority language. Or comparing the sketch results with what we know from larger datasets, thus helping to assess the validity of the sketch format, etc.

There is some information in Part II of the manual, but for reasons of feasibility, we are currently focusing on children who are either monolingual or have a single dominant language. However, we are very open to discussing ways to address multilingual acquisition within the sketch format.

Unfortunately, no. Our intent is to provide a framework that you can refer to when applying for your own funding: this may be a way to argue for the relevance of your project and to demonstrate its feasibility to the funding agency.

We have done initial comparisons for German (Urbanczik 2023) and Inuktitut (Lee & Allen 2023). The encouraging result is that the sketch corpora contain high-frequency phenomena and major stages in the acquisition trajectory, and they do not produce wrong results. But the corpora are too small to capture everything and we have to calibrate generalizations accordingly: they do not allow us to make statements about what children know or do not know at a given age, but they are rich enough to allow us to formulate predictions and hypotheses. In general, analyses should stay as close as possible to the observable corpus data. If you are interested in contributing acquisition sketches of well-described languages, we encourage you to consider the possibility of comparing sketch results with what we know from larger datasets, and thus help assess the validity of the sketch format.

We recommend that the children be recorded at five age points (ages 2;0, 2;6, 3;0, 3;6 and 4;0).

For at least one hour at each time point, but ideally for an entire day.

We recommend a minimum of two children.

Ideally, yes. But if this is not feasible, feel free to record different children at the different age points.

Yes. Our framework allows for considerable flexibility and we believe that any data is better than none. However, we recommend that you contact us early in the process to discuss options.

We recommend not being too picky and including more children, as it is likely that some children will drop out during the course of the study for various reasons; also, it is always better to have more data to choose from. Keep in mind, though, that the project should remain feasible. In the end, a small project that is completed is better than a comprehensive project that is not completed.

Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages: collecting data within the same context makes the data more comparable, but collecting data from different contexts gives us better insights into the diversity of learning environments. We therefore refrain from making recommendations. However, we advise you to consider the recording context in your analysis, as different contexts favor different types of interaction and thus may increase or decrease the frequency of certain phenomena.

Maybe. But the intention is to maximize the amount of language within the 5 hours of recorded interaction. The goal is to develop a basic understanding of what the acquisition trajectory is like in the language - and this will be much easier with more data and clear speech (i.e. a talkative and clear child). Hopefully this won't have too much effect on whether a particular structure is used or not at a given age. On this basis, it will be possible to later extend the scope of the project and aim for comparisons with, e.g., less talkative children. You can also decide to record a wider range of children now, and then use their data for comparison later.

This kind of research will have to pass through a more complex approval procedure, as the collected data and metadata are highly sensitive: video recordings of spontaneous interaction involving minors, plus metadata that captures information on the development of children and their social networks. It is difficult to give general recommendations, though, because the details will vary from university to university and country to country. However, one important issue that needs to be addressed is the possibility of making the data or parts of the data available, e.g. through a language documentation archive or through CHILDES. This may be problematic for the audio/video recordings, but we encourage you to discuss the possibilities with the language community and the archive of your choice, and to consider making minimally the transcripts available.

Since children are minors, their parents or guardians will have to give consent for them. In addition, it is possible and appropriate to seek children’s assent to participate, including watching out for children showing signs of displeasure at being recorded or demonstrating their unwillingness to participate in any way. Furthermore, a long-term relationship with the community may make it possible to discuss ethical aspects of the recordings directly with the children as they grow older.

Their parents or guardians will have to give consent for them. Sometimes it is difficult to identify the children and/or keep track of who appears in which recording, though. We have had good experience with taking screenshots of the children and seeking advice from other community members about who to contact.

There are contexts where it may be ethically problematic to obtain written consent, e.g. because of illiteracy (where asking for written consent would force people to reveal that they cannot read and write), or a community may have had bad experiences of communication with institutions (e.g. with the police, in legal documents etc.) and is therefore suspicious of the written form. In such contexts, it is generally more appropriate to obtain verbal consent, e.g. to go through the consent form together and record the entire procedure on video. However, be aware that ethics approval is often contingent on obtaining written consent. If this is the case, your possibilities are limited - but we would encourage you to take up any such issues with your ethics board: in recent times, some ethics boards have accepted oral consent under such circumstances.

We have had good experience with doing trial recordings with the first set of participants, and then reviewing and discussing the video together. When recruiting further families, we recommend involving participants who were previously recorded: who can explain how the recording worked for them (e.g. what they did during the recording, where they placed the camera, how they handled scenes that they didn't want to be recorded etc.), and - if possible - consent to showing their video (so that other families get an idea of the output). This allows families to discuss issues, resolve doubts etc.

Building personal relationships and community trust is often an indispensable prerequisite to conducting research in small communities where people have little experience with academic settings and principles of research. At the same time, this approach can interfere with informed consent, as people may participate out of trust. Yet, paradoxically, this is also often the key to successfully explaining ethical considerations, and we encourage you to engage with ethics as an ongoing process rather than a one-off event. Long-term personal relationships make it possible to repeatedly show and discuss data, report on progress or present research results. This will not only create a deeper understanding of the project, but also give people the opportunity to voice concerns and revisit earlier decisions. We have also had good experience with local intermediaries: they were much better at explaining ethical issues in a way that was meaningful to the community; and by engaging with their explanations, we were able to uncover misunderstandings and recognize where our own previous explanations were not clear enough.

If local opinion leaders are supportive of a project, it is possible that individual families may feel that they cannot openly refuse to participate. Similarly, it might be socially inappropriate to refuse a request from a researcher who is valued as a guest of the community. In our experience, people are likely to find less explicit ways of signaling their refusal in such cases (e.g. postponing appointments, avoiding the camera etc.), and we will have to be perceptive of such signals. It is also a good idea to create opportunities for people to voice their concerns in private spaces, e.g. when discussing the logistics of an upcoming recording (where to place the camera, what to record etc.), or when reviewing a trial recording. Such contexts give families the opportunity to address specific issues - and to either resolve these issues to the family’s satisfaction, or else allow the family to frame their ‘no’ as a problem with a specific issue, not as a general refusal.

There are different regional and local practices on how compensation is handled, and we advise you to inquire about what is appropriate in your context. Generally, though, participation in data collection is a form of work and people could have done other things during that time (e.g. engage in paid work, do subsistence farming etc.) - and some form of compensation is thus advisable and appropriate. However, it needs to be aligned with community standards and expectations, so that it is neither a form of coercion (e.g. where people feel they have to consent because they are being paid) nor cause problems in the community (e.g. because the compensation is well above local standards). It is often helpful to discuss these issues with local contacts and seek their advice on what to do and not to do in this regard.

The acquisition sketch format allows for some flexibility (e.g. with regard to the exact ages of the children, gender etc.), but there are nevertheless inclusion/exclusion criteria. Similarly, local opinion might consider families as more or less suitable participants for this type of research. All this may lead to the exclusion of families who would like to participate. In this case, we have had good experience with exploring alternative ways for them to be involved, e.g. contributing to interviews on socialization practices, helping with transcription etc.

We recommend to review the recording with the family and other participants afterwards, so that they can decide if they want to cut scenes (maybe a breastfeeding scene, maybe someone entering the scene without a T‐shirt etc.). Furthermore, people may not be aware at first that someone sitting at the edge of a scene is captured by the camera as well, or that conversations behind the camera may be picked up by the microphone. Reviewing recordings is thus also a great opportunity to discuss the logistics of future recordings (e.g. where to put the camera next time such that participants can easily leave the scene whenever they do not want to be recorded).

Yes. We have had good experience with leaving the camera with families, showing them how to operate it. Such an approach minimizes unwanted intrusions into family life and helps avoid recording scenes that families are not comfortable with. It can also lead to more natural data, as it mitigates the observer’s paradox and as families are in the best position to judge when and where their children are happy to be recorded. However, this approach may not be an option in all cases, and you need to weigh up the advantages against possible disadvantages. People may have no experience with video recording, thus affecting the quality of the recording (e.g. the sound quality, or the camera angle). Especially in the case of sign language research, it is unlikely that families can do the recordings themselves, as this requires lots of experience (e.g. with lighting and background). Furthermore, this approach might introduce a bias (e.g. not capturing contexts that would be important from a research perspective) and could make the data less comparable.

Language is fundamentally multimodal, and children's (and carers') manual and non-manual gestures are an essential part of the communicative event. Transcribing them is very time-consuming, though, and we therefore recommend being selective. Good candidates are emblems with their conventionalized meanings (such as nodding for 'yes' or shaking the head for 'no'), iconics (depicting some aspect of a referent, e.g. roundness when talking about a ball) and/or deictic pointing gestures. You might also consider transcribing some actions if needed to understand a particular situation (e.g. a child hitting their brother). Annotating co-speech gestures, on the other hand, is likely to exceed your capacities. In any case, we recommend focusing on salient cases and/or annotating only a selected part of the corpus - unless, of course, your research focuses on gesture. The CHAT Transcription Manual provides useful notation conventions (of the format &=hits:table, &=pats:head, &=ges:frustration, &=points:car etc.).

SALT (Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts) is widely used among speech-language pathologists. We haven't used it ourselves, but we have been told that it works well. It is also possible to convert SALT transcripts into CHAT format, which then allows the use of the CLAN analysis tools.

We recommend adding a language identifier to each word/morpheme. In a Toolbox/ELAN setup, such a field can be added to the lexical entry of a morpheme and then included in the interlinearization of the utterance. CHAT offers the possibility to mark a word in another language (e.g. "cat@s:eng") or to mark that the entire utterance is in another language.

We offer the possibility to publish within Special Publication 28 of the peer-reviewed journal Language Documentation & Conservation, but of course this is not the only conceivable publisher.

Yes.

There is currently no deadline. The Special Publication is a ‘living issue’ and new sketches can be added as they come in.