I am conducting cognitive interviews to pre-test a survey. My supervisors are not familiar with cognitive interviews and keep referring to it as a pilot (but I will do a pilot after). They tell me that I need to inform participants of the pre-test that they cannot take part in the finalised survey - I think they can. What is the advice? I do not intend to use any data collected in the pre-testing in the survey, I do acknowledge that these participants will have been exposed to some of the questions before, but still think it is ok for them to complete the finalised survey if they wish. Any advice appreciated please - particularly if there is something that says I can in the literature!
Many thanks
Jackie
I would not use the cognitive interview sample in the survey itself, because their exposure to the items would not be comparable to those who have never encountered those items before (let alone thought about the items in the in-depth fashion required in cognitive interviewing).
Is your sample size so small that it makes a difference whether you include these potential participants? And if it is so small, how do you intend to do statistical analyses?
Hi David. Thanks for your response. No, I am not anticipating that the final sample being small (well hopefully not). This is a survey of UK midwives and the ones I hope to recruit to test the survey I also want to recruit as 'survey champions' (subject to separate consent procedure) - this means that they would promote the final survey through social media, local trusts etc. It seems a shame if they couldn't complete the final survey, although I do see the point about being familiar with the items.
Championing the survey is rather different from being counted among the participants. I don't see why being an advocate would be a problem.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Statistics
- Survey