The document presents lessons learned from cognitive testing and vignette applications for the WEAI (Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index) fieldwork conducted in Uganda and Bangladesh. It discusses the need for these tools to refine the index and improve question accuracy while highlighting the importance of understanding respondents' perspectives. Additionally, it outlines the methodology for cognitive testing and vignettes, the challenges encountered, and recommendations for future research.

1. Lessons from WEAI fieldwork in Uganda and Bangladesh
Presented by Katie Sproule & Chiara Kovarik (IFPRI)
A4NH Gender Methods Workshop, Rome
December 2-4, 2014

2.  Why use cognitive testing and vignettes in the WEAI?
 Introduction to cognitive testing
 Introduction to vignettes
 Applying these tools to the WEAI
 The fieldwork
 The results
 Lessons learned
2

3. Why did the WEAI need these
tools?
 After the 2012-2013 baselines, it became obvious
that the WEAI needed to undergo some revisions
and streamlining
 Key indicators were identified as problematic
 Decision was made to develop a second version of
the WEAI (WEAI 2.0)
 Cognitive testing was conducted to ensure that
the questions were capturing the various
dimensions of empowerment and also to ensure
that the index remained standardized
 Vignettes were included to see if they would be a
better way of getting at issues of autonomy
• The WEAI was developed by
IFPPRI, OPHI, and USAID in 2012
to measure women’s levels of
empowerment and inclusion in
the agricultural sector
• It was initially designed to be a
monitoring and evaluation tool
for USAID’s Feed the Future (FTF)
programming in the 19 FTF
countries
• It is composed of 2 sub-indexes:
the five domains of
empowerment (5DE) and the
Gender Parity Index (GPI).
• The 5 domains are: Production,
Resources, Income, Leadership,
and Time
3

4. • Cognitive testing is a qualitative
method that is paired with a
(quantitative) survey
• The purpose of cognitive testing
is to systematically identify and
analyze sources of response error
in surveys, and to use that
information to improve the
quality and accuracy of survey
instruments (Johnson, 2013)
• Cognitive testing can be
especially important for
new/revised instruments, or
those that will be used in
multiple country contexts
(Johnson, 2013)
• Generally conducted as a pre-test
before full field work begins
Cognitive process
Cognitive Stages Cognitive Stage
Definition
Problems Causes
1. Comprehension
2. Retrieval
3. Judgment
4. Response
Source: Johnson, 2013
Breakdown can occur in ANY of the four stages
4
Respondent
interprets the
question
Respondent
does not
understand
Unknown terms, ambiguous
concepts, long and overly
complex
Respondent
searchers memory
for relevant
information
Respondent does
not
remember/does
not know
Recall difficulty, questions
assume respondent has
information
Respondent
evaluates and/or
estimates response
Respondent does
not want to tell,
can’t tell
Biased or sensitive, estimation
difficulty
Respondent
provides
information in the
format requested
Respondent can’t
respond in the
format requested
Incomplete response options,
multiple responses necessary

5. How satisfied are you with your available time for leisure activities? Please give your
opinion on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 means you are not satisfied and 10 means you are very satisfied. If you
are neither satisfied or dissatisfied this would be in the middle or 5 on the scale.
Breakdown in comprehension:
 Respondent may not
understand the concept of
“leisure”, or may understand
it differently from the
researcher
 The concept of
“satisfaction” is ambiguous
and subjective
Breakdown in response:
 Respondent may have never
answered a question in this
format. While questions with
ranking scales are familiar to
Western audiences, they may
not be to everyone
Response error!!
5

6. Back to our example question: How satisfied are you with your leisure time? Please
rank on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being completely unsatisfied and 10 being
completely satisfied
 Some follow up cognitive testing questions might be:
1. Can you tell me in your own words what “leisure” means?
2. What does it mean to you to be “satisfied”?
3. What recall period did you use in your response? Were you thinking about your
leisure time in the past week? The past month?
4. Did you find this question difficult? If so, why?
5. Do you think others would find this question difficult? If so, why?
6

7. 7

8.  Conduct surveys with between 10-15 respondents per language group
 Sampling should be done to maximize variance among respondents
 At least two rounds of cognitive testing should be conducted
 Enumerators need to be appropriately trained in cognitive interviewing
 Audio-record the interviews
 2 enumerators should be present for each individual interview
 There is a large degree of flexibility in designing a cognitive testing that will depend
on the survey and the context of the testing
8

9. What are vignettes?
• Research method where respondents respond to a set of stories describing different
scenarios related to the topic for a hypothetical person/household
• The vignette provides enough context and information for participants to have an
understanding of the scenario being depicted, but needs to be vague in ways that
compel participants to ‘fill in’ detail
• Reveals perceptions and values, as well as social norms in the community
• Allows researchers to get at topics that might otherwise be challenging to ask about
• Can be used as an ice breaker, a way to close the interview, a stand-alone technique
or part of a multi-method approach
9

10. ENUMERATOR: This set of questions is very important. I am going to
give you some reasons why you act as you do in the aspects of
household life I just mentioned. You might have several reasons for
doing what you do and there is no right or wrong answer. Please tell
me how true it would be to say:
[If household does not engage in that particular activity, enter 98 and
proceed to next activity.]
My actions in [ASPECT] are
partly because I will get in
trouble with someone if I
act differently.
[READ OPTIONS: Always
True, Somewhat True, Not
Very True, or Never True]
Regarding [ASPECT] I do
what I do so others don’t
think poorly of me.
[READ OPTIONS: Always
True, Somewhat True, Not
Very True, or Never True]
Regarding [ASPECT] I do
what I do because I
personally think it is the
right thing to do.
[READ OPTIONS: Always
True, Somewhat True, Not
Very True, or Never True]
G5.03 G5.04 G5.05
A Getting inputs for agricultural production
B The types of crops to grow for agricultural production
C Taking crops to the market (or not)
D Livestock raising
G5.03/G5.04/G5.05: Motivation for activity
Never true …………………………………..1
Not very true …………………………………..2
Somewhat true …………………………………..3
Always true …………………………………..4
Household does not engage in activity/Decision not made……………98
10

11. “Now I am going to read you some stories about different farmers and their situations regarding different agricultural
activities. This question format is different from the rest so take your time in answering. For each I will then ask you how
much you are like or not like each of these people. We would like to know if you are completely different from them, similar
to them or somewhere in between. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions.”
STORY QUESTION RESPONSE
A
The types of
crops to grow
for
agricultural
production
G4.A1 “[PERSON’S NAME] can’t grow other
types of crops here for agricultural
production. These are the only things
that grow here.”
To what extent does [PERSON’S
NAME]’s story describe your
situation?
Completely different………………….1
Not very similar…………………………..2
Quite similar……………………………….3
Describes my situation too …………4
Don’t know…………………………………97
G4.A2 “[PERSON’S NAME] is a farmer and
grows – [INSERT LOCAL CROPS]–
because her spouse, or another person
or group in her community tell her she
must raise these crops. She does what
they tell her to do.”
Whatever crops you grow for your
production, are you like [PERSON’S
NAME], doing what you are told by
others to do?
Completely different…………………..1
Not very similar…………………………..2
Quite similar………………………………3
Describes my situation too…………4
Don’t know…………………………..….97
11

12. 1. Culturally and contextually appropriate
2. Focus
• Can make some parts more detailed or direct their attention to it (Braun & Clarke 2013)
• Vignettes should focus on “mundane occurrences” rather than disastrous events (Finch 1987, Hughes 1998)
3. Complexity
• Stay away from overly complex vignettes with too many characters (Braun & Clarke 2013)
• Ensure that the vignette is tapping a single one-dimensional concept (King 2014)
4. Ambiguity
 Can intentionally make certain parts vague to explore assumptions (Braun & Clarke 2013)
5. Single vignette vs. staged vignettes
 Presenting character or plot development in “stages” (Braun & Clarke 2013)
6. Number
 Generally use 5-7 vignettes per concept to be measured (King 2014)
12

13. Question:
1. Anchoring questions: “a technique
designed to ameliorate problems that
occur when different groups of
respondents understand and use ordinal
response categories” (King & Wand 2006)
2. Using “should” versus “would”:
When asking about how a character might
react you may want to get at moral
aspects of the situation or the pragmatic
(Braun & Clarke 2013)
Response:
1. Open-ended response vs. close-ended: Asking
the respondent his/her thoughts on the vignette. Or
giving response options (use an even number of
categories)
2. Response categories relating to the hypothetical
situation vs/ relating to respondent: Responses
relate to how character in situation should or would act
or relate to how respondent should or would act if
he/she were in the same situation (WEAI 2.0)
13
Enumerators need to be well-trained and comfortable with technique

15.  Sites: Bangladesh & Uganda
 Sample size: Consisted of 120
interviews in Uganda and 70 interviews
in Bangladesh
 Questionnaire: A series of roughly 100
questions were developed based off
Johnson et al.’s (2013) paper on
cognitively testing the original WEAI in
Haiti
Photo credit: Chiara Kovarik
15

16.  Cognitive testing revealed issues with
the following areas:
 Distinction between different concepts
 Time frame and recall issues
 Abstract terms or concepts
 Discrepancies between identifying
something as challenging versus saying
others would find it challenging
Photo credit: Katie Sproule 16

17.  Original survey question: “Did you yourself
participate in [ACTIVITY] in the past 12 months (that
is, during the last [one/two] cropping seasons)?”
 Cognitive question: “What timeframe did you include
in your response?”
 Problem: 35% of respondents in Uganda either could
not come up with the recall period used or referred to
a timeframe other than 12 months
 Modified survey question: “Did you yourself
participate in [ACTIVITY] in the past 12 months (that
is, during the last [one/two] cropping seasons), from
[PRESENT MONTH] last year to [PRESENT MONTH]
this year?”
 Results of modification: Timeframe recall errors
dropped to just 6% in Uganda Photo credit: Katie Sproule
17

18.  Pros from our experience:
 Vignettes are fun and new!
 Cons from our experience:
 Some respondents found it challenging to understand the concept of a hypothetical situation
 It was challenging for both enumerators and respondents to grasp what part of the story they
were trying to relate to
 Other thoughts:
 Ambiguous results
 Responses were often much longer and more descriptive than anticipated, even when posed in
a close-ended manner (Bangladesh). This may have been due to not understanding the
question.
 Vignettes made an ideal candidate to cognitively test
 What we might do differently next time
 Vignettes as part of qualitative work?
18

19. Lessons learned and ideas for future
research
• Vignettes and cognitive testing
are not for every questionnaire
• They take extra time, resources,
and enumerator training
• Cognitive testing was valuable in that it allowed us to understand
what is wrong with a question in a very specific way, rather than just
knowing the question is poor and should be changed; it answers the
how it should be changed
• Cognitive testing is not necessarily a stand alone technique; there
were areas where we are unsure what to make of the results (i.e.
effectiveness of vignettes vs traditional autonomy questions)
• While doing multiple iterations of testing may not always be feasible,
doing either a single iteration or a more extended pre-test could be
beneficial to survey designers (e.g. Haiti WEAI cognitive testing)
• It was especially important to cognitively test the WEAI, because it is
administered in 19 countries; similar testing should be considered
with other large multi-country surveys
19

20.  Hopkins, D.J., King, G. (2010). Improving Anchoring Vignettes: Designing Surveys to
Correct Interpersonal Incomparability. Public Opinion Quarterly. pp. 1-22.
 Johnson, K. (2014). “Cognitive Pretesting of Cross-nationally Comparable Survey
Instruments in a Developing Country Context Seminar.” International Food Policy
Research Institute. Washington, DC. 9 May 2014.
 King, G. (2009). Anchoring Vignettes FAQs and Examples.
http://gking.harvard.edu/vign/eg/ [Accessed November 6, 2014].
 Wand, J. (2007). Credible Comparisons Using Interpersonally Incomparable Data:
Ranking Self-Evaluations Relative to Anchoring Vignettes or Other Common Survey
Questions. Available at http://wand.standford.edu.
 Willis, G. B. (2005). Cognitive Interviewing: A Tool for Improving Questionnaire
Design. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
20

21. Thank you!
Any questions?
Contact Katie Sproule (k.Sproule@cgiar.org)
or Chiara Kovarik (c.kovarik@cgiar.org)
21

22.  Bargaining power: “Hope is a cassava farmer in a nearby village. She has her own small plot
that she works on, though her husband owns it. When it comes time to bring her cassava to
market, her husband demands that she give him at least 80 percent of whatever she earns.
What should Hope do?”
 Mobility: “Sumi wants to visit her parents, who live in another village 20 kilometers away.
Her husband agrees, but only if he goes with her. How much power does Sumi have to travel
when and where she wants? Response categories: a lot; some; a little; none.”
 Motivation for decisions-making: “Toko grows the crops for agricultural production that her
family or community expect. She wants them to approve of her as a good farmer. Are you
completely like, somewhat like, somewhat different or completely different from Toko?”
22

23. 23

24. 24

25. 25