Costs and Benefits of Conversational Survey Interviewing

谈话式采访者——通过向受访者解释关键的调查概念而脱离严格标准化方法的调查采访者——有时可以提高基于事实的调查中回答的准确性。采用实验方法，目前的研究更详细地考察了不同类型的会话访谈如何影响回答准确性，定义为受访者的答案与问题中关键概念的官方定义之间的契合度。目的包括了解采访者在判断受访者是否需要帮助解释问题时所考虑的线索，以及了解受访者如何以及何时知道他们不知道如何回答调查问题。这个项目有助于实现几个实际目标。更多地了解不同类型的访谈者偏离调查脚本如何影响回答的准确性，可以帮助调查研究者选择最适合他们的研究目标和成本约束的访谈技术；也就是说，从谈话式面试中获得的准确性可能不值得额外的花费。更多地了解是什么导致受访者向面试官寻求帮助来解释问题，当受访者表现出其他类型的不确定性时，以及这种不确定性是如何表现出来的，这对培训会话型面试官至关重要。调查结果可以为目前的面对面和电话调查访谈以及潜在的以计算机为基础的文本和口头调查系统提供信息。

Conversational interviewers--survey interviewers who depart from strictly standardized methods by explaining critical survey concepts to respondents--can sometimes improve response accuracy in fact-based surveys. Using experimental methods, the current research examines in more detail how different kinds of conversational interviewing affect response accuracy, defined as the fit between respondents' answers and the official definitions of key concepts in the questions. The aims include understanding the cues that interviewers consider as they judge whether respondents need help interpreting questions, and understanding how and when respondents know that they don't know how to answer survey questions. This project contributes to several practical goals. Knowing more about how different kinds of interviewer deviations from the survey script affect response accuracy can help survey researchers choose interviewing techniques most appropriate for their research goals and cost constraints; that is, any gains in accuracy from conversational interviewing may not be worth the additional expense. Knowing more about what leads respondents to ask interviewers for help interpreting questions, when respondents display other kinds of uncertainty, and how this uncertainty is displayed is essential for training conversational interviewers. The results can inform current face-to-face and telephone survey interviews, as well as potential computer-based survey systems, both textual and spoken.