2008 Annual SAPOR Conference
Short Course Offering
So What Have we Discovered? Analysis and Interpretation of Cognitive Interviews
By: Gordon Willis, Ph.D. and Kristen Miller, Ph.D.
Procedures for the conduct of cognitive interviews to pretest survey questionnaires-in particular, think-aloud and verbal probing-have received considerable attention, and are fairly well developed. However, appropriate procedures for summarizing, processing, analyzing, and interpreting the results of cognitive interviews are less clear, and are carried out in many ways. In this short course, we will review the major issues presented when one is faced with the prospect of using cognitive interviewing data to make recommendations and to modify survey questions.
In particular, we cover issues of (a) Standards of evidence - how much, and what type of evidence do we need to confidently make conclusions concerning item function, especially when multiple groups are being interviewed (as for a comparative/cross-cultural investigation); (b) Scope of analysis, concerning the degree to which strictly empirical results can be supplemented by expert opinion; and (c) Packaging, concerning optimal ways to present the findings to clients or colleagues.
The course will involve hands-on exercises, and group discussion, to complement instructor-based presentation, and is geared toward researchers and pretesting practitioners who already have some experience conducting cognitive interviews. A degree of two-way interaction is expected, in which participants can contribute their own experiences and expertise, so that in addition to learning new analysis techniques, participants will assist in helping to guide future developments within this important area.
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