Cognitive Interviewing: A Qualitative Tool for Improving Questionnaires in Sport Science

Abstract

Cognitive models postulate that respondents to a questionnaire follow a four-stage process when answering a question: comprehension, memory retrieval, decision, and response. Cognitive interviewing is a qualitative tool to gain insight into this process by means of letting respondents think aloud or asking them specific questions (Willis, 2005 Willis, G. B. 2005. Cognitive interviewing—A tool for improving questionnaire design, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. [Google Scholar]). It allows one to evaluate whether an individual respondent understands and processes the instrument's items as was intended by the instrument's developer. Flaws and errors in the item response stemming from any of the four stages can be detected. However, cognitive interviewing has rarely been employed in the construction of questionnaires in sport science. In order to promote its use, a short introduction is given and an example from sport psychology is provided. Potential applications for the enhancement of questionnaire construction in sport science, for example, in cross-cultural studies, are also discussed.