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Interviewer attitudes towards respondent persuasion
The impact on production
Machingo, L. M., Forsyth, B. H., McHenry, G. E., Medley, G., Munoz, B., Parker, S. J., Terrey, S. A., & Touarti, C. M. (2017). Interviewer attitudes towards respondent persuasion: The impact on production. In JSM Proceedings: Survey Research Methods Section (pp. 3817-3835). American Statistical Association. https://ww2.amstat.org/sections/srms/Proceedings/y2017/files/594095.pdf
The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) conducted a series of four short surveys with active interviewers in early 2016 to better understand interviewer attitudes in the field and the impact those attitudes may have on respondent cooperation. NSDUH interviewers were asked about overall job satisfaction, supervisor management and project expectations, respondent persuasion, and communication and support. Previous literature shows that interviewer attitudes and characteristics impact survey cooperation in a variety of ways (Durrant et al., 2010). One study conducted by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) examined the role of interviewers’ experience, attitudes, personality traits, and interpersonal skills in determining survey cooperation. In their research, NatCen found that interviewers who “are more positive about the justification, feasibility and usefulness of persuading reluctant respondents” are able to persuade respondents at higher rates (Sinibaldi et al., 2009). This paper describes analysis of the findings from the NSDUH Persuading Respondents survey and includes comparisons to the findings from the NatCen survey. Specifically, we examined interviewer attitudes and cooperation rates by interviewer tenure. Response rates are decreasing across household surveys and costs for mitigating these decreasing response ratesare increasing. Information gained from this analysis may assist in attracting and retaining interviewers likely to be successful obtaining cooperation based on their positive attitudes. This analysis may also lead to improved training in approaches for encouraging cooperation. NSDUH, sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, provides national, state, and substate data on substance use and mental health in the civilian, noninstitutionalized population aged 12 years or older. Approximately 67,500 NSDUH interviews are completed annually by about 700 interviewers. Efforts to increase respondent cooperation are likely have important effects on data quality and utility.
