Interviewing

Survey interviewing is typically a formal, standardized conversation between a person asking questions (the interviewer) and a person giving answers to those questions (the respondent). The respondents are selected because they belong to a population of interest. The population can be very broad (e.g. residents of a city or state, registered voters) or very narrow (e.g. people who have been diagnosed with a particular disease; females who smoke cigarettes, have less than a high school education, and watch the local news on a specified television station). In addition to asking questions, the interviewers may also play other roles, such as gaining initial cooperation from the respondents or showing respondents how to answer self-administered questionnaires on paper or by computer. While some survey data may be ...