Ricerc@Sapienza

Abstract. Mixed methods approach has gained a broad consensus among social science scholars, who
often regard it as a “new paradigm” or the “third way” able to offer new and convincing answers to
the never-ending debate between quantitative and qualitative approaches to social research. In the first
part of the article we reconstruct the theoretical reflection on this topic, showing how the mixed methods
research is a well-rooted practice, dating back to the times of Paul Lazarsfeld and Rensis Likert.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the cognitive interview as a pretest technique for survey questionnaires, assessing its potentials and its limits. The paper begins with a general discussion about pretest as a specific research phase in survey designs, with a focus on the main scopes of making pretest. Then, I described the main approaches to pretest, illustrating some specific pretest techniques for each approach taken into account.