City Research Online

Abstract

This chapter presents arguments showing that cognitive testing provides crucial information regarding how translated questions are understood, the underlying cognitive processes that respondents undergo to answer them, and how this relates to respondents' interpretation of the same questions in the source language. It describes challenges found in multilingual research and different approaches to instrument production in multilingual research. The chapter provides some context by describing translation procedures and translation assessment techniques for survey research. It focuses on the need for pretesting as part of the translation assessment procedures. Idiosyncrasies of cognitive testing of survey translations are also discussed. Finally, the chapter presents examples of problems discovered through the use of cognitive testing of survey translations. Conducting cognitive interviews with individuals who speak the different variations might also be more feasible than finding translation experts from each regional variation.

Publication Type:	Book Section
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs > Sociology & Criminology

Export

Downloads