The cognitive interview: Forging a better link between user needs and education-based information systems

This research compared the efficiency and efficacy of the cognitive interview with the standard information requirements interview in an experiment that used 20 elementary school principals as interviewees. The goal was to evaluate whether the cognitive interview is significantly better than the standard information requirements interview at eliciting episodic knowledge from school principals. Episodic knowledge was measured in terms of events, with a focus on how the study participants used information and data to solve particular organizational problems.; The 20 participating principals were sorted into 10 pairs. Effort was made to pair like principals in terms of their demographic characteristics. One principal from each pair was randomly selected to receive the cognitive interviewing technique, while the other principal in each pair received the standard interviewing technique. After all interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed, 91 events were edited from the transcriptions by the researcher.; Efficiency was measured by counting the number of events elicited per interview. A one-way ANOVA was conducted to determine if there is a significant difference between the number of events elicited from the two interview techniques. Effectiveness was measured through the use of two separate instruments: the Completeness of Detail Instrument and the Living Systems Framework Instrument. Raters used the two instruments to gauge the effectiveness of the elicited events. A bivariate correlation was completed to ensure that the COD and LSF instruments were both measuring effectiveness. To compare the COD and LSF scores of the events elicited from the interviews, a one-way ANOVA was conducted.; Results indicated that the completeness of detail and living systems framework scores of the events elicited from the cognitive interviews were significantly higher than the scores elicited from the standard information requirements interviews. The cognitive interview was not, however, significantly more efficient than the standard information requirements interview. Relationships between the demographic data and the study results were also explored. Lastly, recommendations are made for the current study as well as future studies related to the development of education-based information systems.