Cognitive interview to pretest survey questionnaires. A dialogue between psychology and methodology of social research

The purpose of this paper is to describe the cognitive interview as a pretest technique for survey questionnaires, assessing its potentials and its limits. The paper begins with a general discussion about pretest as a specific research phase in survey designs, with a focus on the main scopes of making pretest. Then, I described the main approaches to pretest, illustrating some specific pretest techniques for each approach taken into account. The second part of the paper deal with cognitive interview, one of the most used pretest technique by academic and non-academic researchers. After an in-depth description of the main strategies for conducting a cognitive interview, I discuss some issues about the design of cognitive interview sessions, with particular reference on how to choose interviewees and interviewers.