Introduction/ overview

This course is designed to familiarise participants with a powerful and efficient method of testing survey questions called Cognitive Interviewing. It will be delivered through a combination of taught theory and practical sessions. This course will provide you with all the information you will need to set up and run your own cognitive interviewing projects. The course will include practical information on how to implement the most popular methods in cognitive interviewing, which are think-aloud, probing, and observation, as well as “hands-on” sessions where participants will have the chance to practice these methods.

Objectives

By the end of the workshop, participants will:

•  Understand what factors contribute to measurement error in surveys, the advantages and disadvantages of different pretesting methods and the theoretical  background to cognitive interviewing;
•  Be able to design cognitive interview protocols and sample frames, conduct interviews and analyse data collected;

Topics

The course covers:

• Why do we need to test survey questions?
• What methods can be used to test survey questions?
• What is cognitive interviewing and why is it useful?
• Designing cognitive interview protocols
• Conducting cognitive interviews
• Management and analysis of cognitive interview data and reporting the findings

Who will benefit?

You will find the course useful if:

• you wish to acquire a theoretical understanding of the role of cognitive methods in the development and testing of survey instruments;
• you need to gain practical experience in cognitive interviewing techniques and analysis of the data;
• you need to plan a cognitive test for the first time;
• you commission or manage quantitative research in central or local government, health or other applied policy sectors and need to learn about pre-testing methods so you can incorporate this stage of development into your work

No prior interviewing experience is necessary for this course, although some prior exposure to questionnaire design will be beneficial.

Learning outcomes

Participants will achieve an awareness of the critical issues and techniques in conducting a cognitive interview and will increase their own ability to do cognitive interviewing.

Course tutor