Interviewer Gender Effects on Survey Responses to Marriage-Related Questions.

This article explores how interviewer gender influences responses to marriage-related questions in face-to-face surveys utilizing the 2006 China General Social Survey (CGSS). The specific marriage items examined concern respondent’s views of the happiness of married people and normative views of marriage and ask: (a) whether married men are happier than unmarried men; (b) whether married women are happier than unmarried women; (c) whether getting married is better than being single; and (d) whether staying married is better than getting divorced. Drawing from social desirability theory, this article examines two specific research questions. First, does the gender of the interviewer influence respondents’ normative views of marriage? Second, do the effects of interviewer’s gender on these questions differ for male and female respondents? The results provide mixed support for gender-of-interviewer effects. Consistent with social desirability theory, the findings indicate that female interviewers elicit more pro-marriage and neutral responses than negative responses to the first two items than male interviewers. For the most part, social desirability theory was not supported for the last two items. Gender differences in the susceptibility to gender of interviewer effects were inconsistent across models. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]