Errors Due to Interviewers and Interviewing

Survey questionnaires can be designed for either interviewer administration, where an interviewer asks the respondent the survey questions and enters the respondent's responses on the questionnaire, or self-administration where the respondent reads the questions and enters his or her responses directly onto the questionnaire without assistance from an interviewer. In this chapter, the focus is on surveys that are administered by a survey interviewer who is either communicating face to face with the respondent or who communicates by telephone. We discuss the interviewer's role in a survey, the types of errors he or she may commit in performing that role, factors that may affect the magnitude of the errors, and methods for evaluating and controlling interviewer errors.