EWCS 2010 - Pre-testing of the questionnaire

As a part of fieldwork preparation, the questionnaire was pre-tested in two countries: the United Kingdom and France. The aim was, firstly, to assess whether the questionnaire was relevant to and easily understood by the respondents, in terms of the concepts and the way they phrased in the questions; and secondly to assess the technical functioning of the questionnaire. 

There were two stages of testing. In the first stage,  ‘real life’ interviews were carried out, using the draft version of the questionnaire. This part focused on the interviewer-respondent interaction and technical functioning of the questionnaire (interviewer instructions, order of questions, filters, response categories, interview duration). In the second stage, cognitive interviews were conducted, aimed at gaining an understanding of the answering processes and finding out whether the new survey questions were understood as intended in both countries. 

Based on the results of the pre-testing the final version of the survey questionnaire was compiled. The modifications that were made can be grouped into the following broad categories:

• revising the structure of the questionnaire (order of questions, filters etc.)
• adding more instructions to the questionnaire and interviewer manual
• deleting questions and adding new ones
• rephrasing questions

After finalising the English master questionnaire and translating it, pilot interviews were carried out in each of the countries to ensure that interviews ran smoothly in all languages.

For more information please see the Pre-test Report [.pdf, 214kb}.