Understanding how participants respond to items in psychological and
educational assessment instruments is crucial for drawing valid
conclusions about the constructs being measured. Cognitive interviews
and focus groups are commonly used to explore these response
processes, providing insights into the elements and experiences that
influence participants' answers. Previous studies have integrated
qualitative data from these methods with quantitative data from
assessment instruments, demonstrating, for example, that narratives
reflecting processes unrelated to the intended construct are linked to
poor psychometric properties or differential item functioning (DIF).
However, a gap remains in connecting these data with the objective
characteristics of the items and the specific experiences participants
undergo while responding.
This study aims to bridge that gap by integrating previously studied
qualitative and quantitative data with both the psycholinguistic
characteristics of the items and psychophysiological measures.
Instruments assessing various constructs, including quality of life,
attitudes toward environmental issues, moral dilemmas, and attitudes
toward inclusive language, were selected for evaluation. Items in each
instrument were analyzed in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical

frequency, and sentence length. Participants responded to these items
and then participated in cognitive interviews, exploring their
interpretation of key concepts and their experiences while responding to
specific items. Eye movements and electrodermal activity (EDA) were
recorded during both phases.
The results will illustrate how integrating multiple sources of information
(quantitative test scores, responses to individual items, qualitative
narratives from interviews, quantitative features of the items, and
physiological data from eye-tracking and EDA) enhances our
understanding of response processes. The contributions of each data
source will be discussed in relation to the constructs assessed by each
instrument. Finally, the study's implications for measurement and
assessment practices will be addressed.