A practical technique for improving the accuracy of interviewer observations: Evidence from the national survey of family growth


West, Brady T. ; Kreuter, Frauke



DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1525822X14549429
URL: http://fmx.sagepub.com/content/27/2/144
Additional URL: http://www.iab.de/de/publikationen/weitere-publika...
Document Type: Article
Year of publication: 2015
The title of a journal, publication series: Field Methods
Volume: 27
Issue number: 2
Page range: 144-162
Place of publication: Thousand Oaks, Calif. [u.a.]
Publishing house: Sage Publ.
ISSN: 1525-822X , 1552-3969
Publication language: English
Institution: Außerfakultäre Einrichtungen > Mannheim Centre for European Social Research - Research Department A
Subject: 300 Social sciences, sociology, anthropology
Abstract: Face-to-face household surveys sometimes ask field interviewers to record observations about selected characteristics of all sampled housing units. Some surveys ask interviewers to record judgments about potential respondents to serve as proxy measures of key variables. Past studies have shown that these judgments are prone to error, which has negative implications for survey estimators in terms of the bias and variance introduced by nonresponse adjustments based on the judgments. Practical techniques for reducing these errors are therefore needed. This article analyzes an intervention implemented in the 2006–2010 National Survey of Family Growth. The intervention was designed to provide field interviewers with observable predictors of a key auxiliary variable for which they were recording observations. The analysis shows evidence of a significant improvement in the quality of the observations. The article concludes with a discussion of directions for future work in this area.




Dieser Eintrag ist Teil der Universitätsbibliographie.




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