Conferences

The aim of the presentation is to outline different aspects of the job of interviewers performing telephone surveys. Within the presentation I will refer to the results of two methodological studies carried out by myself.

The first study was based on a standardized self-completion questionnaire and was conducted (in 2005) among CATI interviewers working for major Polish research centre. The questions measured the interviewers’ opinion on following topics: advantages and disadvantages of CATI interviewer job, predispositions to do the job, telephone interviewer training and dealing with respondents’ refusal-related manners.

The second study is going to be conducted in spring 2009 and will cover CATI interviewers employed in all Polish research agencies which have professional CATI facilities (about 15 companies). The aim of this research is to characterize CATI interviewers as a job category and to point out the limitations of use of telephone interview. The standardized self-completion questionnaire will consist of questions grouped into following modules:

1. interviewers’ motivation for work in a CATI call-centre and their opinions on this job (advantages and disadvantages);
2. interviewers’ opinion on general and project-specific trainings as well as on management system (e.g. communication with supervisors, employment status, pay and benefits, workplace settings and routines);
3. problems with conducting interviews using CATI mode, considering:

a) different types of CATI surveys (e.g. business-to-business & business-to-consumer),
b) different methodological solutions implemented in CATI instruments,
c) different stages of CATI interview – calling (e.g. scheduling callbacks), introducing the interview (e.g. respondent selection, survey introduction, refusals and refusal conversion) and asking questions (e.g. probing).

In the study I intend to include questions identifying socio-demographic features, psychographic features and chosen psychological variables (e.g. those connected with stress and professional burnout). Additionally, I plan to prepare supplementary questionnaires for CATI supervisors as well as for CATI units managers.

The presentation will be based on the results of mentioned two studies. My intention is to present the most interesting conclusions about CATI interviewers’ work.