Cognitive Interview Testing of the National Cancer Institute's Website Evaluation Survey
Cognitive interviewing is a technique used to study the ways in which individuals mentally process and respond to materials presented to them. It draws attention to four cognitive stages in information processing: (1) comprehension of the question, (2) retrieval from memory of information necessary to answer the question, (3) decision processes such as the perceived adequacy of answers given, and (4) the response process, in which the respondent produces an answer that satisfies the task requirements. A major objective of cognitive interviewing is to examine the operation of survey response processes to help identify sources of response error and to improve question construction and administration.

The NCI's cancer information website, Cancer.gov, is visited each month by tens of thousands of health care providers, scientists and researchers, educators, advocacy group members, NCI staff, and members of the public who are interested in learning more about different types of cancer, treatments, research findings, clinical trials, research funding opportunities, and more. Visitors to cancer.gov are randomly selected to take the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) Survey, which gathers feedback from users to capture their experiences at the site and measure their satisfaction. The information is used for ongoing assessment of how well visitors’ needs are being met and for informing improvements to Web site design and content.

GR&C was commissioned by the Academy for Educational Development (AED) to conduct 18 cognitive interviews at NCI's testing laboratory in Rockville, MD to assess website visitors' understanding of the survey questions and ability to provide reliable and meaningful responses. The methods and findings were summarized in a detailed report, prepared jointly by GR&C and AED, intended to provide NCI staff a more in-depth understanding of the ACSI results and to inform decisions about modifications to the questions.