Analyzing Cognitive Interview Data Using the Constant Comparative Method of Analysis to Understand Cross-Cultural Patterns in Survey Data

The rise in multilingual surveys within the U.S. federal government and around the world has led to an increased need for assurance of comparable survey questions and resulting data. Cognitive interviewing (CI) is one method that allows us to examine how different language versions are interpreted and thus detects ways in which translated questions are not comparable. However, despite being a well-established question evaluation methodology, CI findings have been limited due to a lack of standards for analyzing interview data. The authors contend that cognitive interview findings can be strengthened by using existing qualitative analysis methods. In this article, the authors demonstrate how to conduct analysis of CI data using the constant comparative method and present the resulting findings.