ESRA 2027 sessions by theme

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Declining response rates and rising fieldwork costs have led many surveys to adopt mixed-mode designs or move entirely toward self-administered data collection. While these developments offer opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce costs, they also pose challenges for the measurement of complex constructs that have traditionally relied on interviewer administration, such as cognitive functioning.
Measures of cognitive functioning are widely used in health, aging, and longitudinal population studies to assess cognitive abilities and detect early signs of cognitive decline (e.g., ELSA, HRS, SHARE, TILDA). Common assessments include word recall tasks, drawing tasks, and numerical reasoning tasks. Historically, these instruments have been administered and evaluated by interviewers, raising important questions about their implementation in self-administered and mixed-mode survey environments.
The transition to contemporary survey designs requires researchers to reconsider how cognitive functioning can be measured while maintaining data quality, validity, and comparability across modes and over time. Potential approaches include mixed-mode strategies that combine interviewer- and self-administered data collection, selective interviewer administration for subsamples (incl. proxy respondents), and the development of novel instruments tailored for self-completion. At the same time, these innovations raise methodological questions concerning mode effects, measurement equivalence, respondent engagement, accessibility, and the reliability and validity of resulting measures.
This session aims to bring together survey methodologists and researchers specializing in cognitive assessment, as employed in the Harmonized Cognitive Assessment Protocol (HCAP) international research network, the Aging, Demographics and Memory Study (ADAMS) or the 10/66 dementia studies, to discuss current developments and future directions in the measurement of cognitive functioning. We welcome contributions that advance the measurement of cognitive functioning in mixed-mode and self-administered surveys, including studies on instrument development, mode effects, measurement equivalence, innovative survey designs, and the assessment of data quality across survey modes.