Cognitive Interviewing for Testing Survey Questions
Dates: 24th November 2011
Duration: 1 day (9.30am — 4:30pm)
Level: Introductory
Course Fee: £175 (£125 for those from educational institutions)
CCSR offers 5 free places to research staff and students within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester and the North West Doctoral Training Centre.
Course Leader:
Pamela Campanelli and Kingsley Purdam
Course Requirements: Participants should have a basic familiarity with surveys and questionnaires.
Course Summary
This one day course is designed to familiarise participants with this powerful and efficient method of piloting survey questions called Cognitive Interviewing. Cognitive Interviewing is a type of in-depth interviewing which focuses on respondents’ thought processing in answering survey questions and uses specialised techniques such as thinking aloud, probing, observation and paraphrasing. The course is about what cognitive interviewing is as well as how to do it. There are practical exercises as well as lecture time.
Course Objectives
After this course, participants will:
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Have an understanding of the range of techniques which make up a cognitive interview
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Have increased their own ability to do cognitive interviewing
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Have a better awareness of the advantages and disadvantages of different aspects of cognitive interviewi
Target Audience
This course is suitable for people new to cognitive interviewing as well as those who have experience in cognitive interviewing, but would like to brush up on their knowledge and skills. It would be particularly appropriate for those who anticipate conducting a survey who wish to learn this powerful tool to pilot their questionnaires. The course stands alone, but participants will benefit from having had a course on questionnaire design.
Preliminary Reading
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Campanelli, P. (1997), Testing Survey Questions: New Directions in Cognitive Interviewing, Bulletin de Methodologie Sociologique, 55, 5-17 Download here