Conferences

In household panel surveys, such as the German Socioeconomic Panel Study (GSOEP), interviewers play a prominent role in securing cooperation—cooperation with the survey request itself and continued cooperation throughout the interview. However, only a few studies have focused on the influence of the interviewer’s personality on response behaviour. Most studies of interviewer effects on non-response and measurement error have had to rely on data provided by fieldwork agencies to relate interviewer characteristics to respondents’ data. In December 2006, a survey of all current interviewers of the GSOEP was conducted (N=586). 94% of all interviewers responded to the 10-page paper questionnaire, including self-rating measures of attitudes, values, beliefs, and personality characteristics in exactly the same question format used in the GSOEP respondent’s questionnaires. The interviewer questionnaire also contained a 15-item measure of the 'Big Five’ personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. With this data, it is possible to examine effects of the interviewers on survey participation and response behaviour by linking survey data from the interviewers with household and individual level information on respondents. In a multilevel logistic regression model predicting item nonresponse on income questions, extroversion in interviewers increased the chance of item non-response significantly. Further analysis will also look at the interaction effect between respondents’ and interviewers’ personalities on this measurement error, and will examine the effect of interviewer personality traits on response to the survey request. Results will be discussed in terms of their potential usefulness for recruiting and training of interviewers, highlighting the tension between ideal interviewer characteristics for recruitment vs. those ideal for the interview itself.