Public Opinion Quarterly 47:68-83 (1983)
© 1983 American Association for Public Opinion Research
The Effect of Interviewer Characteristics and Expectations on Response
Eleanor Singer is a Senior Research Associate at the Center for the Social Sciences. Martin R. Frankel is Professor of Statistics at Baruch College, CUNY. Marc B. Glassman is an independent statistical consultant in New York City. The authors wish to thank Ed Blair, Charles F. Cannell, Howard Schuman, and Seymour Sudman for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of the paper. The research was made possible by grant SES-78-19797 to the senior author.
This study reports on two sets of findings related to interviewer effects, derived from a national RDD sample of the adult population. The first of these concerns the effect of interviewer characteristics and expectations on overall cooperation rates; the second, the effect of interviewer characteristics and expectations on item nonresponse and response quality. We found that interviewers' age, the size of the interviewing assignment, and interviewers' expectations all had a strong effect on overall cooperation rates; the relation of experience to response rate was curvilinear in this sample. Age and education have consistent but statistically insignificant effects on item nonresponse. The effect of interviewers' expectations on responses within the interview resembles that in earlier studies, but is less pronounced and less consistent.
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