Between June 23, 2015 and July 8, 2015, a survey was conducted related to the research question (How did the Mordvin languages become endangered and can promoting them in education in Mordovia save them?). This survey was conducted because opinions on whether education could save the languages (especially from ethnic Erzyans and Mokshans) were necessary findings. Surveys in general are also useful because it allows one to gather data on people’s attitudes and beliefs, confirm facts relating to demographics, and are also useful in collecting data on the behavioral patterns of certain groups of people and these could reveal trends and how these trends are relatable to known facts (Creswell, 2003, p. 8). The participants of this survey (Appendix 1) were randomly selected people on the Internet and in Japan who matched the criteria of the people targeted for this survey: Uralic peoples (especially the Mordvin peoples—Erzyans and Mokshans), other non-Russian peoples from the Post-USSR, ethnic Russians, and experts on Uralic peoples/languages or Post-USSR minorities (although the latter group was only necessary to provide an educated opinion). These groups were chosen because these peoples have or have had similar situations of language endangerment and/or have had debates on education connected with their languages occur in their countries/regions (an example being the situation in Udmurtia which is described in detail by (Bulatova, Font, & Protassova, 2014)). The survey was conducted via distributing a word document with 10 questions on one page with two more pages containing Russian and Hungarian translations attached (these languages were chosen because Russian remains the lingua franca of most Post-USSR nations and because Hungarian is the most widely spoken Uralic language) in groups on VKontakte related to Erzya and Moksha as well as language-related groups on Facebook. One ethnic Russian and one Kyrgyz were also questioned in person. Ethnic Russian respondents were the most difficult to find despite having the largest and most globally widespread population out of the target groups with only 16 respondents. Mordvinic peoples were difficult to find at first but eventually, due to the kindness of Erzyan journalists and a prominent VKontakte user in Saransk, responses from 29 Mordvinic (16 Erzyans and 13 Mokshans) were gathered. Ultimately, 90 respondents were found, mostly on VKontakte (Appendix 2).
