Using an experimental design, we compare two alternative approaches to dependent interviewing (proactive and reactive) with traditional independent interviewing on a module of questions about sources of income. We believe this to be the first large-scale quantitative comparison of proactive and...

This report derives from the project ?Improving survey measurement of income and employment (ISMIE)? which investigates measurement error in survey data on income and employment, using a UK sub-sample of the European Household Community Panel (ECHP). In this paper we describe the process of...

Linkages of household survey responses with administrative data may be based on unique individual identifiers or on survey respondent characteristics. The benefits gained from using unique identifiers need to be assessed in the light of potential problems such as non-response and measurement...

We analyse consent patterns and consent bias in the context of a large general household survey, the ?Improving survey measurement of income and employment? (ISMIE) survey, also addressing issues that arise when there are multiple consent questions. Using a multivariate probit regression model...

We examine how dependent interviewing affects verbal interaction between interviewers and respondents in questions obtaining current employment details in the British Household Panel Study. Respondents experience few cognition problems when answering DI questions, but interruption and...

The study of interviewer-respondent interaction that occurs during an interview can give very useful insights into the cognitive process of answering questions, the social dynamics that develop in an interview context and the way these dynamics ultimately impact data quality. Behaviour coding is...

On surveys of businesses, the processes of making contact and obtaining co-operation are quite different from those on more frequently studied types of surveys, such as those of households or private individuals. We describe experiences and outcomes on a business survey and discuss lessons that...

This paper evaluates the impact of dependent interviewing (DI) on interviewer burden and data quality using qualitative data collected from a survey carried out in 2006 on the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) interviewers. We find that: (i) DI has a minor effect on interviewer burden, (ii)...