Abstract
The Flourishing Children Project responds to a call for rigorous indicators of positive development in adolescents by creating scales for 19 constructs of positive development in the categories of flourishing in school and work, personal flourishing, flourishing in relationships, relationship skills, helping others to flourish, and environmental stewardship. Each scale can be used alone or in combination to fill gaps in available measures of important constructs of adolescent flourishing. This chapter describes how items for the scales were developed, revised, and tested in cognitive interviews to ensure that items in the scales assessed each construct as it was conceptually defined and that items could be answered by respondents. To test the validity of items and identify problems with item wording, three rounds of cognitive interviews with adolescents ages 12–17 years and parents were conducted in 15 cities across the United States. A variety of techniques were used in the interviews, including concurrent and retrospective “think alouds,” follow-up probes, paraphrasing, and the use of semistructured, open-ended items. Sixty-eight cognitive interviews were conducted with adolescents and 23 parallel interviews were completed with parents. The adolescent sample was spread across racial/ethnic, age (12–13 years old and 14–17 years old), and income groups.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Researchers have explored the administration of cognitive interviews over the telephone (Willis 1999; Beatty and Schechter 1994; Schechter et al. 1996) to increase similarity between test and survey modes, gain the participation of respondents who are unlikely to agree to in-person interviews, increase access to hard-to-reach populations (e.g., participants across the nation and in rural areas), and reduce costs.
References
Beatty, P., & Schechter, S. (1994). An examination of mode effects in cognitive laboratory research. Proceedings of the Survey Methods Research Section, American Statistical Association (pp. 1275–1280). Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association.
Caskey, M. M., & Anfara Jr., V. A. (2007). NMSA Research summary: Young adolescents’ developmental characteristics. Association for Middle Level Education website. Retrieved from http://www.amle.org/Research/ResearchSummaries/DevelopmentalCharacteristics/tabid/1414/Default.aspx
de Leeuw, E., Borgers, N., & Smits, A. (2004). Pretesting questionnaires for children and adolescents. In S. Presser, J. Rothgeb, M. P. Couper, J. T. Lessler, E. Martin, J. Martin, & E. Singer (Eds.), Methods for testing and evaluating survey questionnaires (pp. 409–429). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
DeMaio, T. (1993). Protocol for pretesting demographic surveys at the Census Bureau (Census Bureau monograph). Washington, DC: U.S. Bureau of the Census.
Devellis, R. F. (2003). Scale development: Theory and applications (2nd ed., Vol. 26). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Dykema, J., Schaeffer, N. C., & Garbarski, D. (2011, November). Measuring political efficacy: A comparison between agree/disagree versus construct-specific items. Paper presented at the meeting of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL.
Forsyth, B. H., & Lessler, J. T. (1991). Cognitive laboratory methods: A taxonomy. In P. Biemer, R. Groves, L. Lyberg, N. Mathiowetz, & S. Sudman (Eds.), Measurement errors in surveys (pp. 393–418). New York, NY: Wiley.
Groves, R. M., Fowler, F. J. J., Couper, M. P., Lepkowski, J. M., Singer, E., & Tourangeau, R. (2009). Survey methodology (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
Hess, J., Rothgeb, J., Zukerberg, A., Richter, K., Le Menestrel, S., Moore, K. A., et al. (1998). Teens talk: Are adolescents willing and able to answer survey questions? Paper presented at the meeting of the American Statistical Association Section on Survey Research Methods, Alexandria, VA.
Krosnick, J. A. (1991). Response strategies for coping with the cognitive demands of attitude measures in surveys. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 5, 213–236.
Krosnick, J. A., & Presser, S. (2010). Question and questionnaire design. In P. V. Marsden & J. D. Wright (Eds.), Handbook of survey research (2nd ed., pp. 263–313). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Krueger, R. A., & Casey, M. A. (2000). Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Patton, M. C. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Presser, S., & Blair, J. (1994). Survey pretesting: Do different methods produce different results? Sociological Methodology, 24, 73–104.
Sattoe, J. N. T., von Staa, A., Moll, H. A., & On Your Own Feet Research Group. (2012). The proxy problem anatomized: Child-parent disagreement in the health related quality of life reports of chronically ill adolescents. Health and Quality of Life Outcomes, 10(10). DOI: 10.1186/1477-7525-10-10
Schechter, S., Blair, J., Hey, J. V. (1996). Conducting cognitive interviews to test self-administered and telephone surveys: Which methods should we use? Proceedings of the Survey Methods Research Section, American Statistical Association (pp.10–17). Alexandria, VA: American Statistical Association.
Scott, J. (1997). Children as respondents: Methods for improving data quality. In P. B. L. Lyberg, M. Collins, E. DeLeeuw, N. S. C. Dippo, & D. Trewin (Eds.), Survey measurement and process quality (pp. 331–350). New York, NY: Wiley.
Scott, J. (2000). Children as respondents: The challenge for quantitative methods. In P. Christensen & A. James (Eds.), Research with children: Perspectives and practices (pp. 87–108). London, UK: Falmer Press.
Strussman, B. J., Willis, G. B., & Allen, K. F. (1993). Collecting information from teenagers: Experiences from the cognitive lab. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Statistical Association Section on Survey Research Methods, Alexandria, VA.
Sudman, S., Bradburn, N. M., & Schwarz, N. (1996). Thinking about answers: The application of cognitive processes to survey methodology. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Tourangeau, R., & Bradburn, N. M. (2010). The psychology of survey response. In P. V. Marsden & J. D. Wright (Eds.), Handbook of survey research (2nd ed.). Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Tourangeau, R., & Rasinski, K. A. (1988). Cognitive processes underlying context effects in attitude measurement. Psychological Bulletin, 103, 299–314.
Willis, G. B. (1999). Cognitive interviewing: A “How To” guide. Research Triangle Park, NC: Research Triangle Institute.
Willis, G. B. (2004). Cognitive interviewing and questionnaire design: Better questions are ours for the asking. Paper presented at the 2004 meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Phoenix, AZ.
Willis, G. B. (2005). Cognitive interviewing: A tool for improving questionnaire design. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Zukerberg, A. L., & Hess, J. (1996). Uncovering adolescent perceptions: Experience conducting cognitive interviews with adolescents. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Statistical Association Section on Survey Research Methods, Alexandria, VA.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Lippman, L.H. et al. (2014). Cognitive Interviews: Designing Survey Questions for Adolescents. In: Flourishing Children. SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8607-2_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8607-2_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-017-8606-5
Online ISBN: 978-94-017-8607-2
eBook Packages: Behavioral ScienceBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)