Developing, Translating, and Pretesting Questionnaires for Cross-Cultural Surveys

online course

This course introduces you to cross-cultural research, and notably to what it means to produce comparable multilingual questionnaires that ensure data quality, comparability, and ultimately valid conclusions in research. On day 1, you will be introduced to types, aims, and basic concepts of cross-cultural research, and particularly to the concepts of “equivalence” and “bias.” Furthermore, we will delve into questionnaire design in cross-cultural contexts. Time will be devoted to methods of evaluating and pretesting questionnaire items, such as cognitive interviewing, to ensure that items indeed measure what they are supposed to measure and are comparative across languages. On day 2, you will learn how the quality of survey questions can be estimated. You will be introduced to a tool (i.e., the Survey Quality Predictor [SQP]) that will allow you to predict the quality of your own survey items and that you can use for translation checks when dealing with different language versions of the same item. You will be trained in a very hands-on manner how you can implement the tool in your own research project. On day 3, you will learn about the crucial step of questionnaire translation, and (best practice) translation and assessment methods that are typically discussed in this context. Furthermore, you will learn about aspects to consider in questionnaire translation and potential error sources. The course will conclude with a wrap-up session, bringing all aspects together. On each day, you will gain hands-on experience on some of the methods and tools presented to get an idea of challenges or subtleties inherent in cross-cultural research – and you will have the opportunity to marvel about and discuss cultural and linguistic (dis)similarities!

Course leader

Dorothée Behr is head of the team Cross-cultural Survey Methods, Cornelia Neuert is head of the team Questionnaire Design & Evaluation & Lydia Repke heads the Scale Development and Documentation Team at GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.

Target group

You will find the course useful if:
- you are involved in cross-cultural data collection or cross-cultural survey projects,
- you need to develop, translate, and/or pretest your own (translated) questionnaires for cross-cultural surveys,
- you are interested in analyzing cross-cultural research data and want to understand the impact that sound (or not so sound) cross-cultural questionnaire design and translation procedures have on survey data quality and comparability.

Prerequisites:
- Basic knowledge in questionnaire design and survey methodology will be beneficial, even though it is not required.
- There are no statistical prerequisites.

Course aim

By the end of the course, you will:
- be aware of the challenges involved in cross-cultural measurement, and how you may mitigate or overcome these,
- be able to set up sound procedures for developing, translating, and/or pretesting questionnaires,
- be able to evaluate the comparability and quality of items used in cross-cultural surveys.

Credits info

- Certificate of attendance issued upon completion.

Fee info

EUR 220: Student/PhD student rate.
EUR 330: Academic/non-profit rate.
The rates include the tuition fee and course materials.