Many forms are being returned for my attitudes survey, so thanks to everyone filling them in, and helping with my research. Particularly the members of the University of the Third Age in the UK, who have been responding in great numbers since they received the call yesterday. Many thanks to Adrian Du Plessis, Fellow at Clare Hall (Cambridge, UK), for making this possible.

Here is a brief update on the material that has come in so far:

• this morning the number of returned forms was 310: I’m hoping to get 2000, so please keep on sending them
• the current age range is 21 to 84:  fantastic! I’d also be interested in hearing what younger people think. So please ask your children, grandchildren, younger siblings to fill in the forms for me: it would be great if I could have their views too

• the majority of respondents so far are female. Thank you, girls! But men, where are you? Don’t let the factor gender skew my data
• most people filled in the form for the could of sentence:  155 so far. Is it because they dislike this one most?
• all the occupations pre-specified are represented in the data turn-out. Good! The “Other” category is extremely interesting for my purposes, too: it includes an accountant, an archealogist, a bursar, a chemistry technician, a communication secretary, a diplomat, an engineer, a retired geophysisict, a retired police officer, a policy adviser, a scientist and a trilingual secretary: all this produces great material for me to analyse
• but where are the linguists? So far only 44 have responded: I need you too, so please fill in the forms
• finally, most respondents at this point are British, or use British English as their linguistic model: 201 altogether. Americans lag behind: could anyone tell me if there is something similar to U3A in the US? Please advise …
• btw: the “Other” category here is interesting too: we are currently only looking at two language varieties in this project, British and American. Our next step will be to expand and look at Canadian English, Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English …

Thanks once again for the turn out: things are going extremely well, so keep returning the forms!