Examining Changes of Interview Length over the Course of the Field Period

Abstract

It is well established that interviewers learn behaviors both during training and on the job. How this learning occurs has received surprisingly little empirical attention: Is it driven by the interviewer herself or by the respondents she interviews? There are two competing hypotheses about what happens during field data collection: (1) interviewers learn behaviors from their previous interviews, and thus change their behavior in reaction to the behaviors previously encountered; and (2) interviewers encounter different types of and, especially, less cooperative respondents (i.e., nonresponse propensity affecting the measurement error situation), leading to changes in interview behaviors over the course of the field period. We refer to these hypotheses as the experience and response propensity hypotheses, respectively. This paper examines the relationship between proxy indicators for the experience and response propensity hypotheses on interview length using data and paradata from two telephone surveys.Our results indicate that both interviewer-driven experience and respondent-driven response propensity are associated with the length of interview. While general interviewing experience is nonsignificant, withinstudy experience decreases interview length significantly, even when accounting for changes in sample composition. Interviewers with higher cooperation rates have significantly shorter interviews in study one; however, this effect is mediated by the number of words spoken by the interviewer. We find that older respondents and male respondents have longer interviews Kirchner & Olson JSSM 2017 EXAMINING CHANGES 2 despite controlling for the number of words spoken, as do respondents who complete the survey at first contact. Not surprisingly, interviews are significantly longer the more words interviewers and respondents speak.

Measurement of Interviewer Workload within the Survey and an Exploration of Workload Effects on Interviewers’ Field Efforts and Performance

“…The introduction of time-varying interviewer characteristics to explain changes in interviewer behavior and performance can be attributed to Olson and Peytchev (2007), who proposed using interview order to capture interviewers' increasing familiarity with the survey instrument over the fieldwork period. Whereas interview order has become the standard operationalization of interviewers' within-survey experience (e.g., Loosveldt and Beullens 2013;Kirchner and Olson 2017), most other interviewer characteristics studied in the survey research literature remain defined and operationalized at the interviewer level. Many interviewer characteristics can indeed be assumed sufficiently stable over the fieldwork period.…”

The Effect of Question Characteristics on Question Reading Behaviors in Telephone Surveys

“…Finally, interviewers gain experience (i.e., practice) with questions over the field period (Olson and Peytchev 2007;Olson and Bilgen 2011;Kirchner and Olson 2017), which may reduce misreading and disfluency. Alternatively, this experience may reveal common respondent difficulties on questions, leading interviewers to make changes to avoid respondent problems.…”

“…Interviewers' question administration time may cue respondents about expected response quality, with a fast delivery suggesting that less careful answers may be acceptable (Cannell et al 1981;Fowler and Mangione 1990;Loosveldt and Beullens 2013). Although it is well established that interview length varies across interviewers (e.g., Olson and Peytchev 2007;Olson and Bilgen 2011;Loosveldt and Beullens 2013;Kirchner and Olson 2017;Vandenplas, Loosveldt, Beullens, and Denies 2017), it is less well understood why this variation occurs. One reason might be differences in how interviewers ask survey questions.…”

Reading Fast, Reading Slow: The Effect of Interviewers’ Speed in Reading Introductory Texts on Response Behavior

“…Instead, interviewers adapt their interviewing behavior as they gain more experience, leading to declining interview times over the field period (Olson and Peytchev 2007;Bo ¨hme and Sto ¨hr 2014). This decline has been shown to be more pronounced in face-to-face settings than in telephone interviews, presumably due to less strict monitoring (Kirchner and Olson 2017). Although there is evidence that interviewers do not adhere strictly to survey instructions as their experience with the procedures increases (Chromy, Eyerman, Odom, McNeeley, Hughes 2005;Olson and Bilgen 2011), the question of how this might substantially influence the response behavior of respondents is less clear.…”