Measuring interviewer effects in SHARE Germany

Interviewer effects are found across all types of interviewer-mediated surveys crossing disciplines and countries. While studies describing interviewer effects are manifold, identifying characteristics explaining these effects has proven difficult. This paper proposes a conceptual framework of interviewer characteristics for explaining interviewer effects. The framework encompasses four dimensions of interviewer characteristics: general interviewer attitudes, interviewers’ own behavior, interviewers’ experience with measurements, and interviewers’ expectations. An interviewer questionnaire based on this conceptual framework was implemented on the fourth wave of SHARE Germany in early 2011. An exploratory analysis of the interviewer data collected shows associations between the response and consent rates that interviewers expect to achieve and the other dimensions of interviewer characteristics.