Interviewer Debriefing

Interviewer debriefing is a process used to gather feedback from telephone and field (in-person) interviewers regarding a particular survey effort. As the project staff members who most closely interact with respondents, interviewers provide a unique perspective on how questions are answered by respondents and which questions may be difficult to ask or answer. They also can provide other, general observations about the administration of the survey instrument. These debriefing sessions can be held either in-person (as is usually the case for telephone interviewer debriefing sessions) or over the phone (as is often the case for field interviewer debriefing sessions).

Prior to conducting an interviewer debriefing, a member of the project staff—either the project director or the person who has managed the data collection effort—usually creates a ...