Cognitive Pretest of a Factorial Survey Experiment on Future Narratives and Family Care

Within the Preparation Module for the Einstein Center for Population Diversity (ECPD), diverse research institutions came together to provide new survey instruments for the innovation sample in the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP-IS). With the goal of collecting insightful information about future narratives and family care, central topics of the ECPD research endeavor, factorial survey was chosen as a suitable method. A preliminary set of vignettes was designed conjointly, and before proceeding with the large-scale survey, a series of cognitive pretests were conducted to examine comprehensibility and context effects. In this study we describe the design and analysis of these cognitive pretests, with a special focus on the process of designing the final survey informed by the pretests’ feedback.