Who's Asking? Interviewer Effects on Unit Nonresponse in the Household Finance and Consumption Survey

• Activity Number: 574 - Survey and Administrative Data Linkage in a European Survey of Wealth
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 6, 2020 : 3:00 PM to 4:50 PM
• Sponsor: Survey Research Methods Section
• Author(s): Nicolas Albacete* and Pirmin Fessler and Peter Lindner
• Companies: Oesterreichische Nationalbank and Oesterreichische Nationalbank and Oesterreichische Nationalbank
• Keywords: unit nonresponse; interviewer effects; interviewer survey; HFCS

Abstract

This study examines interviewer effects on household non-response in the three waves of the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (HFCS) in Austria. We exploit the rare opportunity to combine this wealth survey data together with a large set of paradata on all households including non-respondents, with an administrative dataset on income, as well as with an interviewer survey on interviewer characteristics including measures of social background, income and wealth and personality traits of the interviewers. Our multilevel benchmark model shows that the proportion of the variation in response behavior that can be explained at the interviewer level has decreased from about one third in the first wave of the HFCS to about 7% in the third wave. Using further specifications of our multilevel model we find that interviewer characteristics found to be positively related to household response are having a university degree, being married, being homeowner, or having a less open personality. At the same time, we find a highly significant negative relationship between survey participation and mean wage in the household’s municipality.