engleski

Young children’s understanding of the well- being survey’s questions – findings from cognitive interviews in Croatia

Cognitive interviewing is a methodological tool for pre-testing questionnaires that helps researchers to make decisions about whether and how to revise questions. In this paper, key findings from cognitive interviews in Croatia as part of the MYWEB EU FP7 project were presented. The main aim of this cognitive interview study within the MYWEB project was to examine how children understand, interpret and process questions and then to select a set of questions measuring well-being constructs that are age-appropriate. In Croatia, 36 children aged between 7 and 8 participated in this research. Over the course of three interview rounds, understanding and comprehension of 28 questions related to thirteen well-being constructs were tested. In cognitive interviews, the verbal probing method was used, encompassing a combination of predetermined and spontaneous probes. The study confirmed the importance of using simple, short questions with children as well as using every-day phrases explicitly related to children’s experiences, activities and behaviour. Results show that specific time frames should be avoided in questions because children of this age were not able to estimate the frequency of their experiences in a predetermined time period. In addition, the simple frequency scales with general verbal response categories (e.g. always, sometimes, never) were the most appropriate response scales. Besides these general findings, the value of cognitive testing for detecting question formulations or phrases that are not characteristic of the Croatian language and/or culture were stressed.

cognitive interviews, children, culturally appropriate questions

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