Interviewer Experience, Interview Order, and Interviewer Behaviors and Attitudes

• Activity Number: 195
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 10, 2004 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Survey Research Methods
• Author(s): Kristen Olson*+ and Andy Peytchev
• Companies: University of Michigan and University of Michigan
• Keywords: interviewer effects ; interviewer behavior ; interview order ; interviewer experience ; interview length ; hierarchical linear models

Abstract

Traditional statistical analyses of interviewer effects on survey data do not examine whether these effects change over a survey cycle. However, the nature of the survey interview is dynamic, interviewers' behaviors and perceptions may evolve as they gain experience, potentially affecting data quality. This paper looks at how interview length, number of reports to open-ended questions, and interviewer evaluations of respondents change over interviewers' workloads. Multilevel models with random interviewer effects are used to account for the clustering of cases within interviewers and individual interviewer characteristics in the 1984 and 1988 National Election Studies. The NES released sample in four replicates, minimizing the confound between order in an interviewers' workload and sample composition. We find that over the course of the studies, all three measures change significantly. Interviewer prior survey experience also was significantly negatively related to the length of the interview. These findings have implications for interviewer training prior to and during studies, as well as suggesting future research to reveal why these behaviors and perceptions change.