Cognitive Interview

Problems Addressed by Cognitive Interviewing

Cognitive interviews are used to identify a variety of potential problems with items of structured instruments. Gordon Willis and colleagues identified key cognitive processes involved in responding to questionnaires that were potentially problematic: comprehension, retrieval, judgment, and response. Problems of comprehension are related to respondents' understanding of the item and whether or not that understanding is in keeping with the investigator's intent. Sophisticated or overly technical language and lengthy complex questions can pose a threat to respondents' ability to understand items. In other instances, respondents may understand the item but in an unintended way. For example, the item may ask about respondents' beliefs about health promotion with the intent of eliciting information on what sorts of things are linked to a healthy lifestyle, but respondents may interpret the item as asking how religious beliefs contribute to health. Problems of retrieval are related to respondents being able to recall certain information or experiences. For example, respondents may understand the question but have no memories of their experiences or opinions on the issue. Issues of judgment relate to respondents' decisions about what information to provide and how to frame their answers. For example, if the question relates to a sensitive topic, participants may respond in a socially desirable way that does not reflect their actual experiences or opinions. Response problems have to do with how respondents fit their experiences and opinions into the response format of the questionnaire. As noted by Chris McQuiston and colleagues, members of certain cultural and ethnic groups have considerable difficulty in translating their experiences and opinions into a Likert scale response set. Cognitive interviewing is useful in helping the investigator to uncover the nature and extent of all these measurement problems.

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