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Nonresponse is a repeatedly reported concern in survey research. In this article, we investigate the technique of reissuing nonrespondents to another interviewer and attempting to convert them into respondents, using data of Rounds 7 and 8 of the European Social Survey (ESS) in Belgium. The results show no marked differences between respondents interviewed by the more and the less successful interviewers, indicating that the latter are not more successful in persuading more reluctant respondents to participate. Sample units that were unsuccessfully approached in the initial phase by an interviewer with a high response rate are more difficult to convert during the reissue phase. Sample units that were unsuccessfully approached in the initial phase by an interviewer with a low response rate are easier to convert during the reissue phase.

Interviewer characteristics are usually assumed fixed over the fieldwork period. The number of sample units that require the interviewers’ attention, however, can vary strongly over the fieldwork period. Different workload levels produce different constraints on the time interviewers have available to contact, recruit and interview each target respondent, and may also induce different motivational effects on interviewers’ behavior as they perform their different tasks. In this article we show that fine-grained, time-varying operationalizations of project-specific workload can be useful to explain differences in interviewers’ field efforts and achieved response outcomes over the fieldwork period. We derive project-specific workload for each interviewer on each day of fieldwork in two rounds of the European Social Survey in Belgium from contact history and assignment paradata. Project-specific workload is measured as (1) the number of sample units which have been and remain assigned on any day t (assigned case workload), and (2) the number of sample units for which interviewer activity has started and not yet ceased on any day t (active case workload). Capturing temporal variation in interviewers’ workloads in a direct way, the time-varying operationalizations, are better predictors than are the interviewer-level operationalizations of typical (active or potential) workload that are derived from them, as well as the traditional total-count workload operationalization.

Purpose In survey methodology, it is well-known that interviewers can have an impact on the registered answers. This paper aims to focus on one type of interviewer effect that arises from the differences between interviewers in the systematic effects of each interviewer on the answers. In the first case, the authors evaluate interviewer effects on the measurement of alcohol consumption in European countries. The second case is about the interviewer effects on the respondents’ tendency to (non)differentiate their responses and the consequences of this response style for the correlation between variables. Design/methodology/approach The interviewer effects are evaluated by means of interviewer variance analysis. Because respondents are nested within interviewers, we can specify a two- or three-level random intercept model to calculate the proportion of variance explained by the interviewers. Data from the seventh round of the European Social Survey are used. Findings The results in the first case show that the substantive conclusions about the effect of gender and education on the alcohol measures continue to hold when interviewer effects are taken into account. The results of the second case make clear that interviewer effects on attitudinal questions are considerable. There is also a significant effect of the interviewers on the degree that respondents differentiate their responses. The results also illustrate that correlations between attitudinal variables are influenced. This also implies that the results of statistical procedures using a correlation or covariance matrix can be strongly influenced by the tendency to (non)differentiate and the interviewers’ impact on this tendency. Originality/value The results clearly demonstrate that there are considerable differences between countries concerning the impact of the interviewers on substantive variables. Cross-national differences are striking and the importance and necessity to evaluate interviewer effects in a cross-national survey becomes clear.

Interviewer characteristics affect nonresponse and measurement errors in face-to-face surveys. Some studies have shown that mismatched sociodemographic characteristics – for example gender – affect people’s behaviour when interacting with an interviewer at the door and during the survey interview, resulting in more nonresponse. We investigate the effect of sociodemographic (mis)matching on nonresponse in two successive rounds of the European Social Survey in Belgium. As such, we replicate the analyses of the effect of (mis)matching gender and age on unit nonresponse on the one hand, and of gender, age and education level(mis)matching on item nonresponse on the other hand. Recurring effects of sociodemographic (mis)match are found for both unit and item nonresponse. ispartof: Social Science Research vol:67 pages:229-238 ispartof: location:United States status: published

Suitable auxiliary data is important in order to assess the potentially detrimental effects of nonresponse on survey estimates. Whereas sufficient individual-level auxiliary data is rarely available, aggregated data is often quite readily accessible. We investigate whether municipality-level data from official administrative registries is useful to explain and predict individuals’ survey response outcomes in two rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) in Belgium. This study was prompted by the recent publication of the 2011 Belgian Census. This is the first Belgian census produced by linking various national administrative databases instead of a nationwide survey. It offers free and easy access to a broad range of data at the municipality level. We find no consistent results in the two rounds of the ESS, and the overall usefulness of aggregated data appears limited. Individual-level data available from other auxiliary sources is more strongly and more consistently related to survey response outcomes. Nonresponse analyses in the ESS and other surveys would benefit from access to individual-level administrative registry data, but as this is usually restricted, alternative auxiliary data sources such as interviewer observations will need to suffice. ispartof: Statistical Journal of the IAOS vol:33 issue:3 pages:645-659 status: published

Previous research shows that interviewers to some extent fail to expend the effort that is needed to collect high-quality survey data. We extend the idea of interviewer satisficing to a related task, in which the interviewers themselves answer survey questions. We hypothesize that interviewers who self-administer the questionnaire in a careless manner, also will not apply themselves fully to the task of administering survey interviews. Based on interviewer and respondent data from the sixth round of the European Social Survey in Belgium, we find support for some of the hypothesized associations between (suboptimal) response characteristics of interviewers in the “task as respondent” and the same (suboptimal) response characteristics recorded for their respondents, specifically with regard to interview speed, multiple response, and item nonresponse to the household income question. ispartof: Field Methods vol:29 issue:2 pages:140-153 status: published