Costs and Benefits of Conversational Survey Interviewing

谈话式访谈员-调查访谈员不采用严格标准化的方法，而是向答卷人解释关键的调查概念-有时可以提高基于事实的调查中答卷的准确性。 本研究采用实验的方法，更详细地研究了不同类型的会话面试如何影响回答准确性，即回答者的回答与问题中关键概念的官方定义之间的匹配。 其目标包括了解面试官在判断受访者是否需要帮助解释问题时考虑的线索，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。 该项目有助于实现若干实际目标。 了解更多关于不同类型的采访者偏离调查脚本如何影响响应准确性，可以帮助调查研究人员选择最适合他们的研究目标和成本限制的采访技术;也就是说，从对话式采访中获得的任何准确性都可能不值得额外的费用。 了解更多的是什么导致受访者要求面试官帮助解释问题，当受访者表现出其他类型的不确定性，以及这种不确定性是如何显示的，这对培训会话面试官至关重要。 这些结果可以为当前的面对面和电话调查访谈以及潜在的基于计算机的文本和口语调查系统提供信息。

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.