What is Cognitive Debriefing (Part 1)?

Cognitive debriefing is a language test of a linguistically validated questionnaire of healthy volunteers or patients with a specific disease to prove that the translation is indeed clear, easy to understand, relevant and culturally adapted to future users.

1. Purpose

The purpose of each interview is to assess the clarity of the translation of the patient’s questionnaire, its relevance to a specific culture, and whether it is appropriate.

Note: The purpose of the interview is NOT to gather information on whether the patient is in good or bad health.

A language expert reviews the patient’s responses and assesses whether the translation needs to be revised. The language expert makes the final decisions on whether further changes to the translation need to be made to ensure that any patient can understand each translated question. The revised translation is usually used in much larger future studies.

It is important for the interviewer to keep in mind that the sole purpose of the interview is to confirm that the patient’s questionnaire is clear and appropriate for the language and country in which it is being tested.

The cognitive debriefing form provided should be used as a tool for interviewing respondents.

2. Interviews

The purpose of each interview is to identify the questions and the possible answers in the patient’s questionnaire that are problematic, to determine why, and to record the suggestions given by the respondents.

The interviewer encourages respondents to focus on how the questions are expressed, rather than on the order or structure of the possible answers.

Each interview consists of three parts:

1. Introductory part, in which the interviewer provides information about the interview to the respondent;
2. Filling in the questionnaire by the respondent independently;
3. Discussion of the point’s statement between the respondent and the interviewer.
4. Presentation of the interview to the respondent

• The interviewer explains that the purpose of the interview is to discuss the translation of the questionnaire in order to understand whether the way of expression is clear and easy to understand before distributing it to future respondents.
• The interviewer emphasizes that the information provided by the respondent will remain anonymous (i.e. his/her name will not be recorded and will not be linked to what he/she says) and confidential (i.e. it will not be disclosed out of context of the translation project and will only be used to improve the translation).
• The interviewer reminds you that his/her participation is voluntary, that he/she may refuse to participate or terminate his/her participation in the interview at any time and is free to refuse to answer some of your questions.
• The interviewer explains what will happen during the interview and what the expected duration of the interview is.

NN Translations will shortly present Part II of the Cognitive debriefing topic due to the great interest of our clients in this particular service.

Contact us for more information on how we can help you with your translation or cognitive debriefing needs today!