Measurement of Home Background Indicators: Cognitive Laboratory Investigations of the Responses of Fourth and Eighth Graders to Questionnaire Items and Parental Assessment of the Invasiveness of These Items

摘要

Cognitive interviewing procedures were developed to investigate how fourth and eighth grade students respond to survey items asking about home and family factors. The survey items studied were taken from large, U.S. Department of Education studies, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) background questionnaires and the National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS:88). Students were trained to think aloud, providing insights into the cognitive processes they employed in responding to these survey items. In addition, specific probes were created and used to provide further information about their response processes. The procedures also included a validation component. Information relevant to each item was provided by a parent in the first half of the data collection session. This material was integrated with additional information provided by the parent and the student in the second half of the session, producing a criterion against which the students initial response could be compared. With this knowledge, it was possible to identify errors and the reasons that these errors occurred. This information was used to revise many of the items, which underwent further testing in the second phase of this project.