Sociology Commons^™

Examining The Association Between Interviewer And Respondent Speaking Pace In Telephone Interviews, Angelica Nicole Phillips

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Telephone interviewers are typically trained to speak at a pace of two words-per-second to enhance respondent cognitive processing. Although interviewer speaking pace varies across different question characteristics such as question length and complexity, the pace at which respondents answer questions in a telephone survey and whether pace varies by question characteristics has received scant attention. Furthermore, although there is a longstanding hypothesis that the speed at which interviewers ask questions influences the speed of respondent replies and that this in turn influences the quality of answers provided by respondents, few empirical studies directly examine the relationship between interviewer speaking pace …