Brady T. West, Ting Yan, Frauke Kreuter, Michael Josten, Heather Schroeder
Examining the Utility of Interviewer Observations on the Survey Response Process

This chapter focuses on a different type of paradata that could provide information about breakdowns of the survey response process: post-survey interviewer observations of respondents and their behaviors during the interviewing process. This chapter analyzes interviewer observations from two surveys – the European Social Survey (ESS) and the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). In the ESS, interviewers recorded the five post-survey interviewer observations on a five-point scale (ranging from “never” to “very often”). In the NSFG, the dependent variables measuring indirect indicators of data quality included one paradata variable and four proxy indicators of measurement error. In the NSFG, the types of observations contributed to defining the quality classes, suggesting that both respondent behaviors and the interviewing environment can affect response quality; this makes sense given the sensitive subject matter about sexual health. In the ESS, only the observations of respondent behaviors were found to vary across the derived quality classes.