Conversation Analysis and Interaction in Standardized Survey Interviews

Abstract

Surveys use questions to collect measurements from a sample in order to estimate characteristics of a population. The “objective” data obtained by survey interviews are achieved in the interaction between respondents and interviewers who have been trained to behave in a standardized manner. Over the years, both critics and practitioners of standardized survey interviewing have considered how the fundamentally social nature of the interview affects the data produced there. Both groups consider the interaction between the interviewer and respondent when they evaluate the quality of survey data. Critics present examples of interactions that depart from ordinary conversation as evidence that the resulting data cannot be valid. Practitioners suggest that surveys are about measurement rather than meaning in a conventional sense and view such individual incidents as leading to measurement error that results from unusual circumstances or “bad” survey questions. They also consider that adherence to rules of standardization improves the overall quality of the data in the aggregate by increasing reliability. We consider these issues by reviewing the meaning of standardization, the role of tacit knowledge for conducting and participating in the interview, and recent conversation analytic (CA) studies of interaction during survey calls.

Speaking in turns and sequences: Interactional competence as a target construct in testing speaking

“… 6. The ill-fitting question format in Excerpt 13 raises the issue of standardization in interactional language tests. Since further consideration of this important problem is beyond the scope of this paper, we refer readers to the extensive conversation-analytic research on interaction in standardized survey interviews (Maynard & Schaeffer, 2013). …”

Conversation Analysis in Applied Linguistics

“…The pre-allocation of turns to participants with particular institutional identities is a defining organizational feature of formal institutional talk. It has been documented extensively in studies of courtrooms (Atkinson & Drew, 1979; Drew, 1992), teacher-fronted classrooms (Mehan, 1979; Seedhouse, 2004), and interviews conducted for a large range of institutional purposes, including news interviews (Clayman & Heritage, 2002), medical interviews (Heritage & Maynard, 2006), oral proficiency interviews (Ross & Kasper, 2013; Young & He, 1998), and standardized survey interviews (Houtkoop-Steenstra, 2000; Maynard & Schaeffer, 2012). In nonformal institutional talk, turn-taking is managed by the participants regardless of their institutional identities, for example, in unmoderated team meetings (Bilmes, 2008; Vöge, 2011) and conversations-for-learning (Hauser, 2008; Kasper & Kim, in press).Overall structural organization: Does the activity progress serially through particular ordered phases?…”

“…Efforts to expand applied CA's traditional critical perspective on standard social science concepts to standard social science methods are underway (Drew, Raymond, & Weinberg, 2006). Most advanced is CA research on standardized survey interviews (Houtkoop-Steenstra, 2000; Maynard & Schaeffer, 2012), but CA has also began to expose the organization of qualitative research interviews (Talmy & Richards, 2011) and focus groups (Wilkinson, 2011).…”