Conferences

While monitoring interviewer quality is of importance to all studies, it may be particularly difficult to accomplish consistently in a cross-national context. Cross-national studies often contract with different survey agencies for each country, each with a different incentive structure for interviewers. Thus, while one agency may provide interviewer compensation based on hours reported, another may provide payment based on the number of completed interviews an interviewer submits. Language and cultural constraints make it impractical if not impossible for a centralized agency to carry out traditional quality monitoring, typically in the form of call-backs to participating respondents. While the literature for detecting falsification is relative sparse, there are several recommendations available, including reinterviews / call-backs (Schreiner et. al. 1988), response and non-response rates (Schreiner et. al. 1988) use of time stamps to compare reported and actual completion dates (Bushery et. al. 1999), comparison of response patterns (Murphy et. al. 2004), and the application of Benford’s law (Schäfer et. al. 2004). Each of these tools is useful, but, except for reinterviews, requires the accumulation of falsified interviews before detection can take place. In this presentation, we suggest that the strategic implementation of specific item-level timings can help to uncover falsifications even at the beginning stages of data collection. We demonstrate the utility of this method with results from both Europe and the United States.