Abstract
Frederick Conrad and Michael Schober
(1996) "How Interviewers' Conversational Flexibility Affects
the Accuracy of Survey Data," Proceedings of the Section
on Survey Research Methods, American Statistical Association.
Standardized survey interviewing is widely advocated in
order to reduce interviewer-related error (e.g. Fowler &
Mangione, 1990). But Suchman and Jordan (1990, 1991) argue
that standardized wording may decrease response accuracy
because it prevents the conversational flexibility that
respondents need in order to understand what the survey
designers have intended. We evaluated these competing
positions - standardized versus flexible interviewing
approaches — in a laboratory experiment. Professional
interviewers asked the respondents questions from three
large, government surveys, using either standardized or
flexible interviewing techniques. The respondents provided
answers on the basis of fictional descriptions enabling the
experimenters to measure response accuracy. Accuracy and
certain characteristics of the interaction were compared
under standardized and flexible interviewing conditions. The
two interviewing techniques led to virtually perfect accuracy
when the concepts in the questions clearly mapped onto the
fictional situations. When the mapping was less clear,
flexible interviewing increased accuracy substantially, from
27% to 87%. We discuss theoretical and practical implications
and propose which circumstances justify the use of either
interviewing technique.
KEY WORDS: Questionnaire Pretesting, Cognitive Interviewing
Last Modified Date: July 19, 2008
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