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Cognitive testing of questionnaires
PRISM is amongst the pioneers of introducing cognitive
testing of questionnaires in India. Cognitive testing aims to explore,
understand and explain the range and diversity of ways in which people
go about answering questions on a survey. The objective of this interviewing
is to probe respondents' understanding of the question, and their thinking
as they provide the answer. This allows the researcher to ascertain whether
or not a question is working as it is intended and whether respondents
are able to obtain information that will allow them to answer the questions
accurately. In this way many covert problems not otherwise apparent in
the design and review process may be identified. Cognitive testing can
also aid the development of questionnaires by suggesting improved and
unambiguous question wording, layout and routing.
Cognitive testing generally takes place as a one-to-one interview, although
it is possible to use a focus group situation. The interviewer probes
the respondent to elicit what they understand a question to mean, and
how they came to the answer they gave. Techniques used include concurrent
and retrospective probing. Probing is informed by a cognitive model of
the mental processes involved in responding, which comes in five parts
(Tourangeau (1984) and Eisenhower et al. (1991):
Encoding in memory (respondents have to have some knowledge or memory
of what is being asked about)
Comprehension (respondents understand the question and relevant concepts)
Retrieval (respondents retrieve the information from memory)
Judgement (respondents assess the completeness and relevance of what
they remember)
Communication/response (respondents decide whether their answer fits
the answer categories provided and also decide whether they actually want
to provide an answer or provide one that might be socially acceptable)
PRISM uses cognitive testing as a ‘best practice’ in the
development of questionnaires for all its research projects.
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Cognitive
testing of questionnaires
PRISM is amongst the pioneers of introducing cognitive testing of
questionnaires in India. More |
The
Rasogulla- Idli- Scale
The rasogulla -idli- laddoo-vadapao scale is PRISM’s adaptation
of the standard semantic differential
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