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the interview, nor should the interviewer provide any feedback to respondents, positive or
negative, with respect to the specific content of the answers they provide.
Two obstacles to standardization:
Open-ended, factual questions Write down all information relevant to the questions
objectives.
Open-ended, opinion questions Write down the answer verbatim; use no paraphrasing
or summaries.
Close-ended, factual questions Check off the answer chosen by the respondent. If the
respondent is not certain which category fits, treat the question as an open question and
record all the relevant information. The final decision about how to treat the answer
should be made during the coding operation.
Close-ended, opinion questions Check off the answer chosen by the respondent. Probe
under the respondent chooses an answer. Do not check off an answer category unless the
respondent chooses it.
The interviewer does not volunteer personal information to the respondent about life
situations, views or values.
During the interview interaction, the interviewer should be careful that the feedback
provided to respondents does not imply evaluation or judgment about the content of the
respondents answers.
Some interviewers are better than others in carrying out the question and answer process.
Certain interviewer characteristics might alter the context or meaning of questions.
Interviewer characteristics might alter the quality of the relationship between the
interviewer and respondent.
Interviewer Training
Four parts to the interviewers job are:
Methods of training:
Interviewer manual
Lectures
Demonstrations
Supervised practice
Monitoring performance, with evaluation and feedback, after training is over
Training affects:
Adapted from: Fowler, F. J., & Mangione, T. W. (1990). Standardized survey interviewing.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.