Gender-of-Interviewer Effects in a Video-Enhanced Web Survey

Abstract

In this paper, a video-enhanced version of a Web survey is assessed. Instead of written questions on a screen, a female and a male interviewer shown on prerecorded flash video clips administered the questions to the respondents. Given the more pronounced human cues induced by the audio-visual channel, we expected gender-of-interviewer effects similar to face-to-face interviews. In a field-experimental study, 880 respondents from the University of Kassel online access panel took part in a survey on relationships, sexual behaviors, and related issues. Random subsamples saw a female or a male interviewer, respectively, while the control group answered the Web survey in a traditional text-based Web survey mode. Results indicate that gender-of-interviewer effects occur in a video-enhanced Web survey similar to a face-to-face interview. Since we found same-gender effects as well as opposite-gender effects – which contradicts social distance theory – we speculate that the direction of a gender-of-interviewer effect depends on the existence of gender-related social stereotypes.

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