Interviewing

Interviewer Characteristics and Demeanor

Physical attributes such as age, race, gender, and voice, as well as attitudinal attributes such as friendliness, professionalism, optimism, persuasiveness, and confidence, are important attributes that should be borne in mind when selecting interviewers. Even when questions are well written, the success of face-to-face and telephone surveys are still very much dependent on the interviewer. Interviews are conducted to obtain information. However, information can only be obtained if respondents feel sufficiently comfortable in an interviewer's presence. Good interviewers have excellent social skills, show a genuine interest in getting to know their respondents, and recognize that they need to be flexible in accommodating respondents' schedules.

Research shows that interviewer characteristics can definitely affect both item response and response quality and might even affect a respondent's decision to participate in an interview. It might, therefore, be desirable in many cases to match interviewers and interviewees in an effort to solicit respondents' cooperation, especially for interviews that deal with sensitive topics (e.g., racial discrimination, inequality, health behavior, or domestic abuse) or threatening topics (e.g., illegal activities). For example, women interviewers should be used to interview domestically abused women. Matching might also be desirable in some cultures (e.g., older males to interview older males), or for certain types of groups (e.g., minority interviewers for minority groups). Additionally, matching might help to combat normative responses (i.e., responding in a socially desirable way) and might encourage respondents to speak in a more candid manner. Matching can be done on several characteristics, namely, race, age, ethnicity, and sex.

Interviewer Training

When a research study is large and involves the use of many interviewers, it will require proper training, administration, coordination, and control. The purpose of interviewer training is to ensure that interviewers have the requisite skills [Page 633]that are essential for the collection of high-quality, reliable, and valid data. The length of training will be highly dependent on the mode of survey execution, as well as the interviewers' experience. The International Standards Association, for example, recommends a minimum of 6 hours of training for new telephone interviewers involved in market, opinion, and social research.

Prior to entering the field, an interviewer training session should be conducted with all involved interviewers. At this session, interviewers should be given a crash course on basic research issues (e.g., importance of random sampling, reliability and validity, and interviewer-related effects). They should also be briefed on the study objectives and the general guidelines/procedures/protocol that should be followed for data collection. If a structured questionnaire is being used to collect data, it is important that the group go through the entire questionnaire, question by question, to ensure that every interviewer clearly understands the questionnaire. This should be followed by one or more demonstrations to illustrate the complete interview process. Complications and difficulties encountered during the demonstrations, along with recommendations for coping with the problems, should be discussed subsequent to the demonstration. Detailed discussion should take place on how to use probes effectively and how to quickly change “tone” if required. A pilot study should be conducted after training to identify any additional problems or issues.

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