Sociology Commons^™

General Interviewer Techniques: Developing Evidence-Based Practices For Standardized Interviewing, Nora Cate Schaeffer, Jennifer Dykema, Steve M. Coombs, Rob K. Schultz, Lisa Holland, Margaret Hudson

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The practices of standardized interviewing developed at many research sites over many years. The version of standardization that Fowler and Mangione codified in Standardized Survey Interviewing has provided researchers a core resource to use in training and supervising standardized interviewers. In recent decades, however, the accumulation of recordings and transcripts of interviews makes it possible to re-visit the practices of standardization to describe both how respondents actually answer survey questions and how interviewers actually respond.

To update General Interviewer Training (GIT), we brought observations of interaction during interviews together with research about conversational practices from conversation analysis, psychology, and other …

Antecedents And Consequences Of Interviewer Pace: Assessing Interviewer Speaking Pace At The Question Level, Allyson L. Holbrook, Timothy P. Johnson, Evgenia Kapousouz, Young Ik Cho

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The pace at which interviewers read survey questions may vary considerably across interviewers (e.g., Cannell, Miller, & Oksenberg, 1981) and as a function of interviewer experience (Olson and Petchev, 2007). The pace at which interviews are conducted can influence respondent perceptions of the importance of interaction (Fowler, 1966). Interviewer training typically includes instructions to read questions slowly and clearly to respondents is based on the assumption that doing so maximizes data quality (e.g., Fowler and Mangione, 1990). In this research, we examine possible causes and consequences of interviewer pace using data from in person surveys conducted with respondents from four …

Exploring The Impact Of Interviewer Perceptions And Interviewer-Respondent Interactions On The Survey Of Income And Program Participation: Analysis Of Cari Recordings, Erica Yu, Rodney L. Terry, Alina Kline, Holly Fee, Robin Kaplan

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Interviewers play a significant role in telephone and face-to-face interviews, including gaining respondent cooperation and administering survey questions. Increasingly, interviewers’ perceptions of the respondent and interview experience, such as cooperativeness and interest, are also being used to assess measurement error and make adjustments to data (West, 2013; Kirchner et al., 2017). Although interviewer perceptions are typically recorded at the end of the interview, interviewers are likely to begin forming perceptions about the household and respondent based on their first contact attempt (and continue developing them during the interview). We hypothesize that interview context factors, such as interviewer perceptions of the …

Response Times As An Indicator Of Data Quality: Associations With Interviewer, Respondent, And Question Characteristics In A Health Survey Of Diverse Respondents, Dana Garbarski, Jennifer Dykema, Nora Cate Schaeffer, Dorothy Farrar Edwards

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Survey research remains one of the most important ways that researchers learn about key features of populations. Data obtained in the survey interview are a collaborative achievement accomplished through the interplay of the interviewer, respondent, and survey instrument, yet our field is still in the process of comprehensively documenting and examining whether, when, and how characteristics of interviewers, respondents, and questions combine to influence the quality of the data obtained.

Researchers tend to consider longer response times as indicators of potential problems as they indicate longer processing or interaction from the respondent, the interviewer (where applicable), or both. Previous work …

Race-Of-Virtual-Interviewer Effects, Frederick Conrad, Michael Schober, Daniel Nielsen, Heidi Reichert

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

In developing self-administered interviewing systems that go beyond text, survey designers are faced with choices about how to represent the interviewing agent. In speech-dialog systems like ACASI and IVR, designers must decide if the voice that presents the spoken questions is unambiguously male or female, whether the pronunciation is regionally marked, etc. Any visual representation of an interviewer (e.g., a photograph, a video) requires designers to choose features that visually convey demographic features like race, gender, age, etc. Here we investigate whether the representation of animated virtual interviewers (VIs) affects responses in the same way that analogous attributes of human …

How To Conduct Effective Interviewer Training: A Meta-Analysis, Jessica Daikeler

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Interviewer training can improve the performance of interviewers and thus also the quality of survey data. However, the question of how effective interviewer training is for improving data quality and more importantly, which determinates drive its success, remain unanswered. This research uses meta-analytical methods to evaluate both the improvements in data quality due to interviewer training and the effectivity of training modules with respect interviewer performance. We consider various aspects of data quality, namely unit nonresponse, item nonresponse, probing behavior, administration, reading, and recording. Based on more than sixty experimental studies, we find that comprehensive interviewer training improves unit- and …

What Do Interviewers Learn? Changes In Interview Length And Interviewer Behaviors Over The Field Period, Kristen Olson, Jolene Smyth

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Interviewers systematically speed up over the field period of a survey as they conduct interviews (Olson and Peytchev 2007; Olson and Bilgen 2011; Kirchner and Olson 2017). Competing hypotheses for this increase in speed is that interviewers learn from previous interviews, changing their behaviors accordingly, or that they change behaviors in response to who the respondent is, including both respondent’s fixed characteristics and their response propensity. Previous work (e.g., Kirchner and Olson 2017) has failed to completely explain this learning effect, even after accounting for a wide range of measures of each of these hypotheses. However, prior work has not …

Interviewer Variation In Third Party Presence During Face-To-Face Interviews, Zeina N. Mneimneh, Julie De Jong, Jennifer Kelley

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The presence of a third person in face-to-face interviews constitutes an important contextual factor that affects the interviewee's responses to culturally sensitive questions (Aquilino, 1997; Casterline and Chidambaram, 1984; Mneimneh et al., 2015; Pollner and Adams, 1994). Interviewers play an essential role in requesting, achieving, and reporting on the private setting of the interview. Our recent work has shown that the rate of interview privacy varies significantly across interviewers; while some interviewers report high rates of privacy among their interviews, others report low rates of privacy for the interviews they administered (Mneimneh et al., 2018). Yet, there is a lack …

The Cannell Legacy, Nancy A. Mathiowetz, Peter V. Miller

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Charles Cannell engineered the study of Interviewer-respondent interaction. He created conceptual frameworks for understanding the interviewing process and its impact on data quality. He invented methods for observing and recording interview interaction. He pioneered the use of randomized experiments in the survey context. He amalgamated insights from clinical and social psychology, sociology, group dynamics, as well as research on verbal and nonverbal communication to inform his work. This interdisciplinary approach has broadly influenced both interviewing research and practice. In this paper, we review Cannell’s many contributions to the field and his enduring legacy.

Scientific Network Of Experts: Interviewer Effects And Interviewer Training, Daniela Ackermann-Piek, Joe Sakshaug

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Although the collection of survey data is undergoing a notable shift toward online and mixed-mode data collection methods (Baker et al., 2010; Groves, 2011), interviewers are still heavily involved in the majority of survey data collections that serve as a basis for important economic, educational, and public policy decisions. Research supports the notion that interviewer characteristics and task-specific skill levels significantly influence the resulting data quality (see, e.g. Ackermann-Piek, 2018; Billiet & Loosveldt, 1988; Dahlhamer, Cynamon, Gentleman, Piani, & Weiler, 2010; Durand, 2005; Fowler Jr., 1991; Hox & de Leeuw, 2002; Jäckle, Lynn, Sinibaldi, & Tipping, 2013; Sakshaug, Tutz, & …

Interacting With Interviewers In Voice And Text Interviews On Smartphones, Michael Schober, Frederick Conrad, Christopher Antoun, Alison W. Bowers, Andrew L. Hupp, H. Yanna Yan

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

As people increasingly adopt SMS text messaging for communicating in their daily lives, texting becomes a potentially important way to interact with survey respondents, who may expect that they can communicate with survey researchers as they communicate with others. Thus far our evidence from analyses of 642 iPhone interviews suggests that text interviewing can lead to higher quality data (less satisficing, more disclosure) than voice interviews on the same device, whether the questions are asked by an interviewer or an automated system. Respondents also report high satisfaction with text interviews, with many reporting that text is more convenient because they …

The Accuracy And Utility Of Using Paradata To Detect Interviewer Question-Reading Deviations, Jennifer Kelley

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Deviations from reading survey questions exactly as worded may change the validity of the questions, thus increasing measurement error. Hence, organizations train their interviewers to read questions verbatim. To ensure interviewers are reading questions verbatim, organizations rely on interview recordings. However, this takes a significant amount of resources. Therefore, some organizations are using paradata generated by the survey software, specifically timestamps, to try to detect when interviewers’ deviate from reading the question verbatim.

To monitor interviewers’ question reading behavior using timestamps, some organizations estimate the expected question administration time to establish a minimum and maximum question administration time thresholds (QATT). …

Interviewer Falsification In Survey Research: Detection Methods And Impact Of Fraudulent Interviews, Silvia Schwanhäuser, Joseph Sakshaug, Yuliya Kosyakova, Frauke Kreuter

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The role of the interviewer and sources of interviewer error in the survey data collection process are widely discussed topics in the survey methodology literature. An understudied problem in this context is the falsification of interview data by the interviewer. Research gaps concern, for example, how conclusions drawn from survey data are affected by falsified interviews. So far it is commonly assumed, that the possible effect of falsifications on univariate statistics can only be as high as the overall share of falsified data. Since the share of faked data is usually very low for most surveys, the problem is regarded …

Investigating The Use Of Nurse Paradata In Understanding Nonresponse To Biological Data Collection, Fiona Pashazadeh, Alexandru Cernat, Joseph W. Sakshaug

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The recent collection of biological data in large-scale sample surveys has opened up new possibilities for research into the interactions between physical and social mechanisms in the general population. Whilst the possibilities are undoubtedly exciting, these data can create additional challenges from the viewpoints of both collection and analysis. In particular, the extra burden of biological data collection can lead to increased incidences of nonresponse, potentially affecting the quality of the data and the robustness of results from subsequent analysis. Where the two-stage nurse visit survey design is used, such as in Understanding Society (UKHLS) and the English Longitudinal Study …

Comparison Of Different Approaches To Evaluate And Explain Interviewer Effects, Geert Loosveldt, Celine Wuyts

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Within survey methodology it is common knowledge that interviewers in face-to-face or telephone interviews can have undesirable effects on the obtained answers. These effects can be created in an active way by, for example, asking suggestive questions or they can be obtained in a passive way as a consequence of certain interviewer characteristics eliciting socially desirable answers. These active and passive effects may differ from interviewer to interviewer. These differences between interviewers in systematic effects create additional variance in the data. The proportion of variance in a (substantive) variable that can be explained by the interviewers is the ‘so called’ …

Nvestigating The Utility Of Interviewer Observations On The Survey Response Process, Frauke Kreuter, Brady West, Ting Yan, Michael Josten, Heather Schroeder

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

TBD.

Designing Studies For Comparing Interviewer Variance Components In Two Groups Of Survey Interviewers, Brady T. West

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Methodological studies of interviewer effects often seek to identify factors that influence the magnitude of interviewer variance for particular survey questions. There is a long history of work in this area, and results from studies like this have informed current interviewing practice. Unfortunately, many studies of this type suffer from one or more of the following limitations in terms of their designs: 1) a failure to randomly assign interviewers to the treatments being compared; 2) a failure to formally test for differences in the variance components between the two groups; and 3) insufficient statistical power for comparison of the variance …

Questions Administered By Telephone Or In Person: Differences In Interviewer-Respondent Interactions, Yfke Ongena, Marieke Haan

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

When choosing a mode for data collection of computer-assisted surveys, a researcher has three main options available: the computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI), the computer-assisted personal interview (CAPI) or a web interview (i.e., a self-adminstered interview). Generally, CAPI allows for collecting most complex data, of the highest quality, but only when interviewers are well-trained and effort is made to monitor and manage interviewers during field work. This higher data quality in CAPI interviews may be due to the finding that presence of an interviewer reduces the amount of respondents’ satisficing behaviors (i.e., not investing the required effort to provide meaningful answers, …

Modeling Interviewer Effects In A Large National Health Study, James Dahlhamer, Aaron Maitland, Benjamin Zablotsky, Carla Zelaya

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Interviewers play a critical role in determining the quality of data collected in face-to-face surveys. Interviewers can have positive effects on recruiting sample members to participate, leading to higher response rates. Conversely, interviewers can have negative effects on the quality of measurement. The literature suggests that interviewers can bias answers when observable characteristics of the interviewer influence the respondent to answer questions a certain way. For example, the sex or race of interviewers may influence respondents’ answers about their own attitudes toward sex or race. However, it is more common for differences in interviewer behavior, such as how questions are …

Let’S Talk About Money! How Do Interviewer Expectations Affect Item Nonresponse To Income And Asset Questions?, Sabine Friedel

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Personal income and assets are sensitive topics to discuss and the discussion of money tends to be a taboo. This phenomenon is reflected by high nonresponse rates to items that address income and assets questions in interviewer-mediated surveys. However, such information is important to obtain, as household income and different types of assets are used as core variables in socio-economic models. Such item nonresponse is influenced by interviewers. Although interviewers are trained to conduct standardized interviews, some interviewers obtain a higher number of item nonresponses than others. This study examines interviewer effects on nonresponse to several income and asset questions …

Interviewer Effects On Data Quality: Does Interviewer Experience Favor Completions Over Quality?, Megan M. Ruxton, Rodney Muilenburg

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Interviewer experience has been identified as an important factor in achieving higher response rates for telephone interviews. The causal mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear (Couper and Groves 1992; Jackle, Lynn, Sinibaldi and Tipping 2013; West and Blom 2016), but extant research suggests a combination of experience and personality traits, skills and attitudes explain substantial variation in cooperation rates (Groves and Couper; Jackle et al 2013). West and Blom (2016) summarize the positive relationship between experience and response rates and call for work to identify additional mediators of these relationships. The relationship between experience and data quality is even less …

Explaining Interviewer Effects On Survey Unit Nonresponse: A Cross-Survey Analysis, Daniela Ackermann-Piek, Annelies G. Blom, Julie M. Korbmacher, Ulrich Krieger

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

In interviewer-administered surveys, interviewers are involved in nearly all steps of the survey implementation. However, besides many positive aspects of interviewers’ involvement, they are – intentionally or unintentionally – a potential source of survey errors. In recent decades, a large body of literature has accumulated about measuring and explaining interviewer effects on survey unit nonresponse. Recently, West and Blom (2017) have published a research synthesis on factors explaining interviewer effects on various sources of survey error, including survey unit nonresponse. They find that previous research reports great variability across surveys in the significance and even direction of predictors of interviewer …

Modelling Group-Specific Interviewer Effects On Nonresponse Using Separate Coding For Random Slopes In Multilevel Models, Jessica M. E. Herzing, Annelies G. Blom, Bart Meuleman

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

To enhance response among underrepresented groups and hence, to increase response rates and to decrease potential nonresponse bias survey practitioners often use interviewers in population surveys (Heerwegh, 2009). While interviewers tend to increase overall response rates in surveys (see Heerwegh, 2009), research on the determinants of nonresponse have also identified human interviewers as one reason for variations in response rates (see for examples Couper & Groves, 1992; Durrant, Groves, Staetsky, & Steele, 2010; Durrant & Steele, 2009; Hox & de Leeuw, 2002; Loosveldt & Beullens, 2014; West & Blom, 2016). In addition, research on interviewer effects indicates that interviewers introduce …

General Interviewing Techniques: Developing Evidence-Based Practices, Steve Coombs, Margaret Hudson, Lisa Holland, Nora Cate Schaeffer, Jennifer Dykema

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

This poster is a hands-on demonstration of the in-progress General Interviewer Techniques (GIT) materials described by Schaeffer, Dykema, Coombs, Schultz, Holland, and Hudson. Participants will be able to view and listen to the lesson materials, delivered via an online interface, and talk to the GIT developers.

Effects Of Innovative Motivational Strategies And New Staffing Model On Interviewer Attrition: A Data Collection Year In Review, Theresa Camelo, Maureen O’Brien

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Due to high staff attrition and its negative effects on data collection and project cost, a large national study implemented motivational strategies and a new staffing model for the current data collection year. Motivational strategies included retention bonuses, organization gear, and other personalized recognitions. The new staffing model included both a change in weekly hour requirements as well as the number of interviewers staffed in each area. New staff, committed to 20 hours per week, were added to approximately half of the sampling areas with already existing 30 hour per week staff. Two Interviewers were now working a single area, …

Exploring The Mind Of The Interviewer: Findings From Research With Interviewers To Improve The Survey Process, Robin Kaplan, Erica Yu

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

The interviewers’ task in the data collection process is a complex one, with many judgments and decisions being made from moment to moment as they ask questions to get answers from respondents (Japec, 2008). Many survey organizations train their interviewers to use standardized language and read questions verbatim. However, in practice, interviewers may need to use a conversational approach and probe respondents to get the answers needed. This research explores the process by which interviewers make such decisions in real-time by conducting research with interviewers about their experiences collecting data. Using a cognitive interview approach, we asked interviewers about multiple …

How Customization Affects Survey Interaction, Antje Rosebrock, Malte Schierholz

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

One common trend in the world of survey data collection is the increasing use of new technological developments which can change the nature of the survey interview. A fairly recent trend is the use of machine-learning techniques to customize questions for respondents. This has the potential to create an individualized experience for the respondent and to improve data quality. Nevertheless, little is known so far of how customization affects the interaction in the survey interview.

We introduce a tool developed by Schierholz et al. (2018) to code respondents’ occupation categories during the survey. The tool uses supervised learning algorithms to …

Can Paradata Predict Interviewer Effects?, Sharan Sharma

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Consideration of interviewer effects (interviewer measurement error variance) in active quality control does not seem widespread despite its known effect on reducing precision of survey estimates. One major obstacle is that interviewer effect estimates computed on partial data (as a survey is in progress) can be very unstable. We address this issue by exploring the use of paradata (keystrokes and time stamps generated during the computer-assisted interviewing process) as proxies of interviewer effects with a focus on large-scale repeated cross-section or panel surveys.

We first estimate interviewer effects for each item in our analysis by using multilevel models that include …

Humans Vs. Machines: Comparing Coding Of Interviewer Question-Asking Behaviors Using Recurrent Neural Networks To Human Coders, Jerry Timbrook, Adam Eck

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Standardized survey interviewing techniques are intended to reduce interviewers’ effects on survey data. A common method to assess whether or not interviewers read survey questions exactly as worded is behavior coding. However, manually behavior coding an entire survey is expensive and time-consuming. Machine learning techniques such as Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) may offer a way to partially automate this process, saving time and money. RNNs learn to categorize sequential data (e.g., conversational speech) based on patterns learned from previously categorized examples. Yet the feasibility of an automated RNN-based behavior coding approach and how accurately this approach codes behaviors compared to …

Unintended Interviewer Bias In A Community-Based Participatory Research Randomized Control Trial Among American Indian Youth, Patrick Habecker, Jerreed Ivanich

Interviewer Workshop, 2019: Interviewers and Their Effects from a Total Survey Error Perspective

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects often employ members of the host partner community to engage and assist with research projects. However, CBPR may also introduce bias to survey statistics when community partners work as interviewers for projects within their own communities. Here, the advantage of employing interviewers from the local community and region may lead to unintended bias when participants and interviewers know each other outside of the research project. In situations where a preexisting social relationship exists, there is a greater possibility of social desirability bias. This may be particularly true for sensitive issues where they may not wish …