What were They Thinking? Using Cognitive Interviewing to Examine the Validity of Self-Reported Epistemic Beliefs

We employed cognitive interviewing with a sample of secondary, college, undergraduate and graduate students to examine the cognitive validity of a popular epistemic beliefs self-report measure, the Discipline-Focused Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire [DFEBQ] (Hofer, 2000). In addition, we examined cognitive validity across two domains. Analyses of interviews revealed that cognitive validity was good, wherein students’ responses were typically within an expected range of interpretations. However, students’ interpretations of items were not always consistent with researchers’ intended meanings, interpretations sometimes differed across domains, and that the response option “3” as a neutral response was not always used as intended. To improve validity of self-report measures of epistemic beliefs more generally, we recommend that explicit anchors are used, such as “mathematician” instead of “expert,” and that definitions of the dimensions are presented to respondents to ensure interpretations align with researchers’ intended meanings. We end with broader methodological implications.