Experienced interviewers are commonly thought to achieve better quality survey data than inexperienced interviewers. Yet few empirical examinations of differences in data quality on attitudinal questions for experienced versus inexperienced interviewers exist. In this article, we examine whether experienced and inexperienced interviewers differ in their levels of a commonly evaluated data quality measure-acquiescence-in two national surveys. We hypothesize that experienced interviewers will have higher rates of acquiescence than inexperienced interviewers due to either differential pace or differential behaviors. We find that experienced interviewers obtain higher levels of acquiescent reports than do inexperienced interviewers, even after accounting for potential differences in interviewer and respondent characteristics. These differences across interviewers are not mediated by differential pace of the interview, as measured by interview length, implying that there may be differences in interview behaviors for experienced and inexperienced interviewers. We conclude with implications for survey practice and interviewer training and monitoring.

Calendar instruments are hypothesized to promote data quality through the increased use of retrieval cues and conversational probes intended to clarify meanings. this research explores these hypotheses by examining the associations between retrieval and conversational verbal behaviors and data-quality measures. a verbal behavior coding scheme was applied to transcripts of 165 calendar interviews that collected lifecourse information on residence, marriage, employment, and unemployment from respondents in the panel Study of income Dynamics (pSiD). Confirmatory factor analyses revealed three latent factors for interviewers (retrieval probes, rapport behaviors, and conversational behaviors intended to satisfy questionnaire objective) and three latent factors for respondents (retrieval strategies, rapport, and conversational behaviors indicative of difficulty being interviewed). Ratios of discrepancies in annual totals between retrospective calendar reports and reports collected for up to thirty years in the pSiD over the total number of available years were used as measures of data quality. Regression analyses show that the level of behavior and the level of experiential complexity interact in their effect on data quality. both interviewer and respondent retrieval behaviors are associated with better data quality when the retrieval task is more difficult but poorer accuracy when experiential