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Although a small number of studies are available that evaluate the effects of interviewer characteristics in substance use surveys conducted in person, none have clone so using information collected via telephone interviews. We address this issue by examining the utility of social attribution and social desirability models for detecting the presence of interviewer effects in a large statewide telephone survey concerned with substance use. The specific outcome variables of interest were reports of lifetime and 18-month composite drug use. Analyses focus on the direct effects of individual interviewer characteristics (to assess social attribution) and a summary measure of interviewer-respondent similarity (to assess social distance) and employ random effects regression models to control for respondent clustering by interviewer. Results are most consistent with a social distance model and suggest that social distance between respondent and interviewer may decrease the probability of respondents reporting substance use behavior.

We evaluated the importance of interviewer and subject effects on cocaine and marijuana use disclosure in a sample of over 3,000 male juvenile arrestees. Analyses evaluated the viability of Social Attribution and Conditional Social Attribution models of interviewer effects. The viability of alternative models was investigated in the context of comparative analyses excluding and including statistical adjustments for the clustering of responses by interviewers. Interviewer effects were more salient in models predicting marijuana disclosure than in models predicting cocaine disclosure. Logistic regression analyses provided support for Social Attribution and Conditional Social Attribution models of interviewer effects. Models suggested large interviewer cluster effects. Cluster adjustment altered interpretation of effects for both cocaine and marijuana. Subject race/ethnicity effects were salient in models predicting disclosure for both drugs, but were especially large in models predicting cocaine disclosure.