The education question module and interfaces were tested in various settings between 2014 and 2016 in the CAMCES project.

Focus groups and quantitative pretest 2014

The idea behind the CAMCES tool was discussed with experienced interviewers in a focus group in 2014 (download report in German), preparing a quantitative pretest (download report in German).  There was a second focus group, largely involving the same interviewers, after the quantitative pretest, to discuss the results (download report in German). 

Cognitive interview studies 2015-2016

Earlier German and Spanish (Venezuela) versions of the questionnaire and database have been tested in cognitive interviews in 2015 and 2016. 

In Germany, the sample consisted of 31 individuals, 15 of which had German educational qualifications and 16 foreign qualifications. This test was thus designed specifically for assessing the usability of the education measure and tools for multicultural national surveys (i.e. surveys of migrants). In addition to standard cognitive interviewing methods such as conditional probing and paraphrasing, we employed eye tracking to monitor respondents’ interaction with the questionnaire items and coding tools. The German subsample used quotas for representing different age groups and education levels.

In Venezuela, the sample consisted of 33 individuals without migration background (i.e. all were educated in Venezuela). While no eye-tracking was used, screens, audio and video were captured for later analysis. This pretest had the goal to check whether the developed questions and interfaces also work in a cultural context very different from the German one, where the tool was initially developed.

Download reports

• Cognitive interview study in Germany (in German only)
• Cognitive interview study in Venezuela (in English)

Quantitative pilot studies

Earlier Dutch and German versions have been used in quantitative pilot studies. In late 2014, the German Socio-economic Panel Study (SOEP) included the very first version of the CAPI tools in the SOEP Innovation Sample. An updated version has been used on a pilot basis in the SOEP Migration Sample since 2015 for measuring foreign educational qualifications (Schneider et al., 2018; see also CAPI implementation). In early 2016, a pre-final version of the CAWI questionnaire and database was implemented in the Dutch LISS Panel, run by CentERdata. 

Schneider, S., Briceno-Rosas, R., Ortmanns, V., & Herzing, J. (2018). Measuring migrants’ educational attainment: the CAMCES tool in the IAB-SOEP Migration Sample. In D. Behr (Ed.), Surveying the migrant population: Consideration of linguistic and cultural aspects. Mannheim: GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences.