Think aloud evaluation of survey questions is commonly referred to as Cognitive Interviewing. The technique comes from the area of social psychology (where Dillman, Sudman et all that Chauncey mentions come from) and is one method of pre-testing a questionnaire. Other methods include behaviour coding and dress rehearsals.
I was trained in the method of cognitive interviewing over the period of a week, full time, so it's not something you can learn well in a hurry. However, I plan to write an article on testing methods for forms and questionnaires for my website in the near future, so keep an eye out. In the interim, you could: - do a search for "cognitive interviewing" on the web - adapt think aloud methods that are used for testing websites - read one or more of the papers listed below - hire someone like myself (in Australia) or Caroline Jarrett (in the UK) to do it for you! "New strategies for pre-testing survey questions" (Oksenberg, Cannell and Kalton) in the Journal of Official Statistics. "Cognitive Laboratory Methods: A Taxonomy" (Forsyth & Lessler) in Measurement Errors in Surveys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=29233 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
