Good survey research depends on asking the right questions; it is the only way to ensure that the information collected from respondents is suitable for providing good answers to our research questions. The article discusses and advocates a comprehensive consideration of qualitative-interpretive methodology in open forms of pretesting for the evaluation of draft survey questionnaires. We outline an approach we call Qualitative Pretest Interview (QPI). It transfers the idea of negotiated common understanding in everyday communication to the clarification of meaning in draft survey questions and similar stimuli. The QPI involves ascribing interview partners the role of co-experts in this process and employing methodically integrated communication strategies. This paper focusses on how QPIs are conducted. Using an example interview, we illustrate how the particular way of qualitative pretest interviewing aims at a dialogic clarification of meaning in order to reach intersubjective understanding between participant and interviewer. In the process, we gain detailed insights into how and why a certain questionnaire might not work as intended, and ideally how this might be alleviated. QPIs pursue similar goals as Cognitive Interviews but rely more systematically on qualitative-interpretive methodology.
Cognitive interviews have become one of the most important pretest methods in the development and evaluation of questionnaires. Different techniques such as thinking aloud or various probing approaches analyse the comprehensibility and interpretation of questions, uncover difficulties of respondents in answering questionnaires as well as underlying causes. A desideratum of this approach is the methodological framing for which we make a proposal in this article. Direct research interaction in pretest situations can be regarded as an act of understanding others in the sense of qualitative-interpretive social research. On this basis, we discuss the advantage of methodically integrated communication strategies of two established qualitative survey methods - the problem-centred interview and the discursive interview - for the development of a distinct pretest interview approach. It adopts the techniques of the cognitive interview and expands them by the essentially social character of processes of clarifying comprehension. We introduce the term Qualitative Pretest Interview (QPI) in order to avoid the possible narrowing of the understanding of pretest procedures to the problem of ambiguous cognitions. Finally, we reflect on the potential of this approach for standardized survey research.
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