can bilinguals "replace" monolinguals in experimental data collection?

[Susannah Kirby]

Dear Info-Childes community,

I have a research conundrum, and I'm hoping you can assess one possible
solution to it that I've come up with.

I have been investing verb-learning in monolingual children, but in my
current location (Vancouver, BC), monolingual children are nearly impossible
to find!  On the other hand, bilingual kids are extremely easy to recruit.

I'm wondering how methodologically unsound it would be to allow bilingual
children to participate (not mixed in with monolinguals, but as their own
participant group), and then to recruit slightly older children. So for
instance, my target age range for monolinguals is 3-4 years old; for
bilinguals, I might use 4-5 (or even 5-6) year olds. I would also ask for
parents to estimate what percentage of the day the kids hear English input,
and shoot for, say, a 50%+ range.

Is this solution too problematic to even try? I can see reasons why it might
or might not work, but I'm almost at the end of my rope, in terms of my
recruitment problems.

Thanks in advance for any insight and suggestions you can offer!

Best,
Susannah Kirby
SFU Linguistics

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