Choreographing "The Best Interview Ever": Developing and Implementing a Multimodal Family Interview
Elyzabeth Gaumer
New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Daniel Goldstein
New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Linda M. Powell
New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Caitlin R. Waickman
New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development
Many social surveys collect large amounts of data through multiple modes. This often translates into significant demands on respondents' time, a barrier to recruitment. The NYC Housing and Neighborhood Study (NYCHANS) is a large-scale RCT assessing the impact of affordable housing on low-income New Yorkers. We seek to interview multiple respondents in a single family at one appointment with multiple modules. We discuss in this paper how our guiding principles-(1) respect the respondent and (2) work collaboratively across all levels of the project-reduce burden and produce high quality data. We present details of our appointment choreography, interview structures, and Interviewer training. Interview protocol focused on respondent experience and comfort. To this end, we conduct highly choreographed and structured appointments with carefully tailored consent/assent booklets and multimodal data capture including CAPI, CASI, and breakout cards. These principles can be used by any data collection effort to increase efficiency and effectiveness by incorporating carefully planned, multimodal instruments, within structured interview appointments.