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Our Mission

With our cognitive pretests, we support researchers in the development or adaptation of survey instruments to ensure that the questions or items are understandable and interpreted as intended. More information about our services can be found on our website.

Methodological research is our passion! We regularly publish our research results in international peer-reviewed journals and are constantly developing our services on the basis of the results. In recent years, we have expanded our portfolio of methods to include pretests with web probing and eye tracking, among others.

Selected articles:

  • Hadler, P. (2021). Question order effects in cross-cultural web probing: Pretesting behavior and attitude questions. Social Science Computer Review, 39(6), 1292-1312. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439321992779
  • Hadler, P. (2023). The effects of open-ended probes on closed survey questions in web surveys. Sociological Methods & Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241231176846
  • Lenzner, T., Hadler, P., & Neuert, C. E. (2022). An experimental test of the effectiveness of cognitive interviewing in pretesting questionnaires. Quality & Quantity. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-022-01489-4
  • Lenzner, T., & Neuert, C. E. (2017). Pretesting survey questions via web probing – Does it produce similar results to face-to-face cognitive interviewing? Survey Practice 10(4). https://doi.org/10.29115/SP-2017-0020
  • Neuert, C. E. (2020). How effective are eye-tracking data in identifying problematic questions? Social Science Computer Review, 38(6), 793-802. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439319834289
  • Neuert, C. E., & Lenzner, T. (2016). A comparison of two cognitive pretesting techniques supported by eye tracking. Social Science Computer Review, 34(5), 582-596. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439315596157
  • Neuert, C. E., & Lenzner, T. (2016). Incorporating eye tracking into cognitive interviewing to pretest survey questions. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 19(5), 501-519. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2015.1049448
  • Neuert, C. E., & Lenzner, T. (2021). Effects of the number of open-ended probing questions on response quality in cognitive online pretests. Social Science Computer Review, 39(3), 456-468. https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439319866397
  • Neuert, C. E., Meitinger, K., & Behr, D. (2021). Open-ended versus closed probes: Assessing different formats of web probing. Sociological Methods & Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/00491241211031271

Reuse of metadata

The metadata of the pretest database is available for reuse under a CC-BY license. We kindly ask you to name GESIS as the data source in the event of subsequent use of the data.