The development and testing of a module on child functioning for identifying children with disabilities on surveys....

Area of Science:

• Child development and measurement science.
• International health and disability statistics.

Background:

• UNICEF and the Washington Group on Disability Statistics (WG) collaborated to develop a child functioning module.
• This paper details the use of Cognitive Interview (CI) methods in module development.

Purpose of the Study:

• Develop a cross-nationally comparable module for child functioning and disability measurement.
• Evaluate questions using Cognitive Interviews (CI) to identify interpretation issues, errors, and bias.
• Iteratively refine the module based on CI findings.

Main Methods:

• Conducted 385 Cognitive Interviews (CI) across six countries in four iterative testing rounds.
• Employed qualitative data analysis to identify patterns in question interpretation and potential biases.
• Utilized findings to guide iterative revisions of module questions.

Main Results:

• Identified specific areas of question interpretation, error, and bias through CI.
• Implemented four types of revisions: word changes, phrase adjustments, conceptual clarity improvements, and example additions.
• Iterative testing and revision refined the module based on empirical data.

Conclusions:

• The iterative CI process successfully reduced error and bias in the child functioning module.
• The validated module provides a cross-nationally comparable measure of child functioning.
• Cognitive Interviewing proved effective in developing robust measurement tools for international use.