Can Conversational Interviewing Improve Survey Response Quality Without Increasing Interviewer Effects?

West, Brady T.; Conrad, Frederick G.; Kreuter, Frauke; Mittereder, Felicitas

doi:10.1111/rssa.12255

Cited by 24 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Nonetheless, on balance our evidence suggests that clarification attempts—and empowering interviewers to provide clarification—are worth it more often than not. Our evidence is also consistent with findings of objectively improved data quality (compared with administrative records) in national surveys that encourage clarification (e.g., West et al., ).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

When Do Misunderstandings Matter? Evidence From Survey Interviews About Smoking

Schober

Suessbrick

Conrad

2018

Topics in Cognitive Science

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This paper examines when conceptual misalignments in dialog lead to consequential miscommunication. Two studies explore misunderstanding in survey interviews of the sort conducted by governments and social scientists, where mismeasurement can have real social costs. In 131 interviews about tobacco use, misalignment between respondents' and researchers' conceptions of ordinary expressions like "smoking" and "every day" was quantified by probing respondents' interpretations of survey terms and re-administering the survey questionnaire with standard definitions after the interview. Respondents' interpretations were surprisingly variable, and in many cases they did not match the conceptions that researchers intended them to use. More often than one might expect, this conceptual variability was consequential, leading to answers (and, in principle, to estimates of the prevalence of smoking and related attributes in the population) that would have been different had conceptualizations been aligned; for example, fully 12% of respondents gave a different answer about having smoked 100 cigarettes in their entire life when later given a standard definition. In other cases misaligned interpretations did not lead to miscommunication, in that the differences would not have led to different survey responses. Although clarification of survey terms during the interview sometimes improved conceptual alignment, this was not guaranteed; in this corpus some needed attempts at clarification were never made, some attempts did not succeed, and some seemed to make understanding worse. The findings suggest that conceptual misalignments may be more frequent in ordinary conversation than interlocutors know, and that attempts to detect and clarify them may not always work. They also suggest that at least some unresolved misunderstandings do not matter in the sense that they do not change the outcome of the communication-in this case, the survey estimates.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

When Do Misunderstandings Matter? Evidence From Survey Interviews About Smoking

Schober

Suessbrick

Conrad

2018

Topics in Cognitive Science

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“…This is a positive finding, as it shows that conversational interviewers sensed and reacted to respondent confusion in an appropriate way in accordance with their training. It also helps explain the increased accuracy for CI observed by West et al (2017). (3) Do conversational interviewers overuse clarifications (i.e., even when there is no evidence of confusion)?…”

Section: Summary Of Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The final number of completed interviews was 1,850, which represented an interviewer workload of about 30 interviews each. For more details regarding the parent study design, see West et al (2017).…”

Section: Data and Methods Parent Study Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interviewer–respondent Interactions in Conversational and Standardized Interviewing

et al. 2017

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Standardized interviewing (SI) and conversational interviewing are two approaches to collect survey data that differ in how interviewers address respondent confusion. This article examines interviewer–respondent interactions that occur during these two techniques, focusing on requests for and provisions of clarification. The data derive from an experimental study in Germany, where the face-to-face interviews were audio-recorded. A sample of 111 interviews was coded in detail. We find that conversational interviewers do make use of the ability to clarify respondent confusion. Although the technique improved response accuracy in the main study compared to SI, conversational interviewers seem to provide clarifications even when there is no evidence of respondent confusion. This may lengthen administration time and potentially increase data collection costs. Conversational interviewers also employ neutral probes, which are generally associated with standardized interviews, at an unexpectedly high rate. We conclude with suggestions for practice and directions for future research.

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“…The discussion about the degree of openness of the interaction between interviewers and interview partners has existed since at least the 1940s (Beatty 1995); more than 75 years after Lazarsfeld's (1944) first conciliatory intervention (e.g. West et al 2018) it is still ongoing. Both parties involved in this debate provide reasonable arguments that are highly relevant for interview practice.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introducing the Qualitative Pretest Interview (QPI) for questionnaire development

Buschle¹,

Reiter²,

Bethmann³

2020

Preprint

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Cognitive interviews have become one of the most important pretest methods in the development and evaluation of questionnaires. Different techniques such as thinking aloud or various probing approaches analyse the comprehensibility and interpretation of questions, uncover difficulties of respondents in answering questionnaires as well as underlying causes. A desideratum of this approach is the methodological framing for which we make a proposal in this article. Direct research interaction in pretest situations can be regarded as an act of understanding others in the sense of qualitative-interpretive social research. On this basis, we discuss the advantage of methodically integrated communication strategies of two established qualitative survey methods - the problem-centred interview and the discursive interview - for the development of a distinct pretest interview approach. It adopts the techniques of the cognitive interview and expands them by the essentially social character of processes of clarifying comprehension. We introduce the term Qualitative Pretest Interview (QPI) in order to avoid the possible narrowing of the understanding of pretest procedures to the problem of ambiguous cognitions. Finally, we reflect on the potential of this approach for standardized survey research.

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Can Conversational Interviewing Improve Survey Response Quality Without Increasing Interviewer Effects?

Cited by 24 publications

References 34 publications

When Do Misunderstandings Matter? Evidence From Survey Interviews About Smoking

When Do Misunderstandings Matter? Evidence From Survey Interviews About Smoking

Interviewer–respondent Interactions in Conversational and Standardized Interviewing

Introducing the Qualitative Pretest Interview (QPI) for questionnaire development

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