This paper examines the role of interviewers' experience, attitudes, personality traits and inter-personal skills in determining survey co-operation. We take the perspective that these characteristics influence interviewers' behaviour and hence influence the doorstep interaction between...

We assess whether the probability of a sample member participating at a particular wave of a panel survey is greater if the same interviewer is deployed as at the previous wave. Previous research on this topic mainly uses non-experimental data. Consequently, a) interviewer change is generally...

Respondents in long telephone survey interviews may adopt satisficing strategies as they approach the end of the questionnaire (Holbrook, Green and Krosnick, 2003). However, there is inconsistency regarding the relationship between questionnaire length and different forms of satisficing. We...

In the UK, in order to link individual-level administrative records to survey responses, a respondent needs to give their written consent. This paper explores whether characteristics of the respondent, the interviewer or survey design features influence consent. We use the BHPS combined with a...

Household income is difficult to measure, since it requires collecting information about all potential income sources for each member of a household. We assess the effects of two types of edit check questions on measurement error and survey estimates: within-wave edit checks use responses to...

We conduct two large-scale randomised experiments on the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to study methods of reducing panel attrition. The first experiment compares different strategies for tracing and maintaining contact with sample members. We find that change-of-address cards...

Mobile phone survey interviewing is becoming increasingly prevalent, so it is important to understand how it affects measurement error. We link cognitive response process theory (Tourangeau et al 2000) to theories of mode effects to build a comprehensive framework that identifies ways in which...

In face-to-face surveys interviewers play a crucial role in making contact with and gaining cooperation from sample units. While some analyses investigate the influence of interviewers on nonresponse, they are typically restricted to single-country studies. However, interviewer training,...