Interviewer falsification: current and best practices for prevention, detection, and mitigation

Abstract

This article summarizes the findings of a comprehensive review of current best practices for detecting and preventing interviewer falsification and provides recommendations for mitigating and repairing interviewer errors for surveys of the future. We discuss the potential for interviewer errors and how to avoid them through training, monitoring, verification and remediation strategies. We summarize practices used by a small sample of major survey organizations and offer some insights in terms of best practices and provide recommendations for current and potential future practices for the detection and prevention of interviewer falsification. In particular, we describe what we believe is a state-of-the-art program for interviewer falsification mitigation, including a proposed path forward in the areas of metrics and management.