Action at a Distance: Interviewer Effort and Nonresponse in the SCF

• 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): Arthur B. Kennickell*+
• Companies: Federal Reserve Board
• Keywords: nonresponse ; interviewer effects

Abstract

In field surveys, the behavior of interviewers is usually only partially observable, at best. Like most other people, interviewers will tend to choose the easiest path to satisfy the measurable requirements they face--most often, requirements to complete a number of interviews and to keep costs within some bounds. In "suiting themselves" otherwise, the interviewers may impose an additional behavioral filter on the information obtained in the survey. In particular, unit nonresponse may become a function not only of respondents' willingness to cooperate, but also of interviewers' application of effort. Evidence from the 2001 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) presented in Kennickell (2003) indicates that interviewers imposed a systematic pattern of selection in nonresponse through the differential application of effort in that survey. As a consequence of that research, a new case control method was developed for the 2004 SCF to impose a more equal level of treatment on all cases through the first part of a phased field effort. This paper presents a stylized version of that method, analyses nonreponse at the end of the first phase, and explores further possibilities.