Importance of cognitive testing for survey items: An example from food security questionnaires

Cognitive testing is a useful tool for the development of questionnaire items and can also provide valuable information for the analysis and/or interpretation of preexisting Survey data. This paper explains cognitive testing methods and demonstrates the benefits of cognitive testing on existing hunger, food insecurity, and food insufficiency questionnaire items. Semistructured interviews were Conducted using retrospective verbal probing techniques. Each interview consisted of two parts: (1) the respondent answered a series of hunger and food insecurity items successively and (2) the interviewer engaged the respondent in a conversation that explored the meaning of the questionnaire items and the respondent's answers to the items. Selected results are described to illustrate how the assessment of questionnaire items is facilitated by cognitive testing. Among other benefits, cognitive testing can clarify the meaning of specific words, determine the best item form and response categories, and help determine question meaning after a survey has been fielded. These results demonstrate that cognitive testing can be beneficial when assessing the quality of questionnaire items and determining item meaning.