Over the past decades school self-evaluation (SSE) has gained a prominent position in many educational systems in Europe and beyond (e.g. O’Brien, McNamara, & O’Hara, 2015). SSE can be described as a process, whereby well-chosen participants systematically describe and judge the school’s functioning in order to make decisions or adopt initiatives within the framework of school development (Vanhoof & Van Petegem, 2010).

In order to describe organisational characteristics at process-level, often staff members are asked to fill in a questionnaire (MacBeath, Schratz, Meuret, & Jakobsen, 2000). This method, where staff members (i.e. lower-level units) are providing information on the school (i.e. a higher-level unit), accounts for multi-level thinking. The formulation of questionnaire items can differ in design and be appropriate to overcome such a multi-level context (Chen, Mathieu, & Bliese, 2004). A consensus and a referent-shift design are commonly used. The consensus design starts from the perspective of an individual making statements on collective properties (e.g. “I have a clear view on the job descriptions of others in the school”) and where the responses are aggregated onto the organisational level. The latter design tends to capture organisational characteristics by asking respondents to make statements on the organisation as a whole (e.g. “In this school one has a clear view on the job descriptions of others in the school”). Notwithstanding the frequent use of questionnaires, literature has already pointed to several problems that might be lurking beneath the surface (Groves et al., 2009). This raises a fundamental concern about the validity of the results from SSE questionnaires.

One crucial element in obtaining valid SSE results, is how items are cognitively processed by respondents (O'Muircheartaigh, 1999). Cognitive theories distinguish different stages during the processing of items which conceal an interplay between the items and the respondents’ memory (Karabenick et al., 2007). First, respondents have to be able to read and interpret the item. Several aspects are important in that regard; semantics, syntax and pragmatics (Lenzner, Kaczmirek, & Lenzner, 2010; Tourangeau, Rips, & Rasinski, 2000). Secondly, respondents have to start retrieving relevant information from their memory (Karabenick et al., 2007). Lastly, respondents are expected to generate a response, based on the preceding cognitive stages. The extent to which a respondent performs the cognitive processes of interpretation, elaboration and response in line with how the instrument developer intended them, is referred to as cognitive validity (Karabenick et al., 2007).

Despite methodological concerns, users of SSE questionnaires seem to rather readily pass over the issue of cognitive validity, leading to a collective glossing over with regard to this issue. Up till now, it is unknown what problems can trigger cognitive processes that lead to (partially) cognitively invalid  results of SSE questionnaires. These insights can be beneficial in the identification of cruxes for the improvement of existing instruments, but also for the development of new instruments. Altogether, the goal of this study and the identification of these possible flaws, is to increase the chance that items are cognitively valid processed as an important leverage for valid SSE results. To gain more insight in all this, this study focuses on the following research questions:

1. What problems can be identified during the cognitive stages of interpretation, elaboration and response in the answering process which hamper the cognitive validity of SSE results?
2. What problems can be identified for the particular case of referent-shift design items during the cognitive stages of respondents’ answering process which hamper the cognitive validity of SSE results?

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