Interviewing practices, conversational practices, and rapport: Responsiveness and engagement in the standardized survey interview

Sociological Methodology

Volumn 46, Issue 1, 2016, Pages 1-38

  Garbarski, Dana ^a   Schaeffer, Nora Cate ^b   Dykema, Jennifer ^b  

^a LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

Author keywords

Engagement; Interviewer respondent interaction; Rapport; Responsiveness; Standardization; Survey interview

Indexed keywords

EID: 84994851656     PISSN: 00811750     EISSN: 14679531     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0081175016637890     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. Belli, Robert F., Ipek Bilgen, and Tarek Al Baghal. 2013. “Memory, Communication, and Data Quality in Calendar Interviews.” Public Opinion Quarterly 77(S1): 194–219.
2. Belli, Robert F., James M. Lepkowski, and Mohammed U. Kabeto. 2001. “The Respective Roles of Cognitive Processing Difficulty and Conversational Rapport on the Accuracy of Retrospective Reports of Doctors’ Office Visits.” Pp. 197–203 in Seventh Health Survey Research Methods Conference Proceedings. Chicago: University of Illinois–Chicago.
3. Brennan, Susan E., and Herbert H. Clark. 1996. “Conceptual Pacts and Lexical Choice in Conversation.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 22(6):1482–93.
4. Broome, Jessica. 2015. “How Telephone Interviewers’ Responsiveness Impacts Their Success.” Field Methods 27(1):66–81.
5. Cannell, Charles F., and Morris Axelrod. 1956. “The Respondent Reports on the Interview.” American Journal of Sociology 62(2):177–81.
6. Cannell, Charles F., Floyd J. Fowler Jr., and Kent H. Marquis. 1968. “The Influence of Interviewer and Respondent Psychological and Behavioral Variables on the Reporting in Household Interviews.” Vital and Health Statistics: Data Evaluation and Methods Research, Series 2, No. 26. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
7. Cannell, Charles F., Peter V. Miller, and Lois Oksenberg. 1981. “Research on Interviewing Techniques.” Pp. 389–437 in Sociological Methodology, Vol. 12, edited by S. Leinhardt. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
8. Cappella, Joseph N. 1990. “On Defining Conversational Coordination and Rapport.” Psychological Inquiry 1(4):303–305.
9. Cassell, Justine, and Peter Miller. 2008. “Is It Self-administration if the Computer Gives You Encouraging Looks?” Pp. 161–78 in Envisioning the Survey Interview of the Future, edited by F. G. Conrad, and M. F. Schober. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
10. Clark, Colin, Paul Drew, and Trevor Pinch. 2003. “Managing Prospect Affiliation and Rapport in Real-life Sales Encounters.” Discourse Studies 5(1):5–31.
11. Clark, Herbert H. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
12. Clark, Herbert H., and Susan E. Brennan. 1991. “Grounding in Communication.” Pp. 127–49 in Perspectives on Socially Shared Cognition, edited by L. B. Resnick, J. M. Levine, and S. D. Teasley. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
13. Dijkstra, Wil. 1987. “Interviewing Style and Respondent Behavior: An Experimental Study of the Survey Interview.” Sociological Methods and Research 16(2):309–34.
14. Drew, Paul. 1984. “Speakers’ Reportings in Invitation Sequences.” Pp. 129–51 in Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis, edited by J. M. Atkinson, and J. Heritage. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
15. Drew, Paul, and John Heritage, eds. 1992. Analyzing Talk at Work: An Introduction. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
16. Dundon, Tony, and Paul Ryan. 2010. “Interviewing Reluctant Respondents: Strikes, Henchmen, and Gaelic Games.” Organizational Research Methods 13(3):562–81.
17. Dykema, Jennifer, Nora Cate Schaeffer, and Dana Garbarski. 2012. “Effects of Agreedisagree Versus Construct-specific Items on Reliability, Validity, and Interviewerrespondent Interaction.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Orlando, FL.
18. Dykema, Jennifer, Nora Cate Schaeffer, and Dana Garbarski. 2013. “Associations between Interactional Indicators of Problematic Questions and Systems for Coding Question Characteristics.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Boston, MA.
19. Dykema, Jennifer, Nora Cate Schaeffer, Dana Garbarski, Erik V. Nordheim, Mark Banghart, and Kristen Cyffka. Forthcoming. “The Impact of Parenthetical Phrases on Interviewers’ and Respondents’ Processing of Survey Questions.” Survey Practice.
20. Dykema, Jennifer, Nora Cate Schaeffer, Dana Garbarski, Rick Nordheim, and Kristen Cyffka. 2013. “Effects of Question, Respondent, and Interviewer Characteristics on Interactional Indicators of Respondent and Interviewer Processing of Health-related Questions.” Presented at the Interviewer-Respondent Interaction Workshop, Boston, MA.
21. Foucault Welles Brooke. 2013. “Behavioral Correlates of Rapport in Survey Interviews.” Presented at the Interviewer-Respondent Interaction Workshop, Boston, MA.
22. Fowler Floyd J., Jr., and Thomas W. Mangione. 1990. Standardized Survey Interviewing: Minimizing Interviewer-related Error. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
23. Garbarski, Dana, Nora Cate Schaeffer, and Jennifer Dykema. 2011. “Are Interactional Behaviors Exhibited When the Self-reported Health Question Is Asked Associated with Health Status?” Social Science Research 40(4):1025–36.
24. Garfinkel, Harold. 1967. Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
25. Goudy, Willis J., and Harry R. Potter. 1975. “Interview Rapport: Demise of a Concept.” Public Opinion Quarterly 39(4):529–43.
26. Groves, Robert M., and Lars Lyberg. 2010. “Total Survey Error: Past, Present, and Future.” Public Opinion Quarterly 74(5):849–79.
27. Haan, Marieke, Yfke Ongena, and Mike Huiskes. 2013. “Interviewers’ Questions: Rewording Not Always a Bad Thing.” Pp. 173–94 in Interviewers’ Deviations in Surveys: Impact, Reasons, Detection and Prevention, edited by P. Winker, N. Menold, and R. Porst. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.
28. Hak, Tony. 2002. “How Interviewers Make Coding Decisions.” Pp. 449–70 in Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview, edited by D. W. Maynard, H. Houtkoop-Steenstra, N. C. Schaeffer, and J. van der Zouwen. New York: John Wiley.
29. Hauser, Robert M. 2005. “Survey Response in the Long Run: The Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.” Field Methods 17(1):3–29.
30. Heath, Christian, and Paul Luff. 1996. “Documents and Professional Practice: ‘Bad’ Organisational Reasons for ‘Good’ Clinical Records.” Pp. 354–63 in Proceedings of the 1996 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
31. Heritage, John. 2011. “Territories of Knowledge, Territories of Experience: Empathic Moments in Interaction.” Pp. 159–83 in The Morality of Knowledge in Conversation, Vol. 29, edited by T. Stivers, L. Mondada, and J. Steensig. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
32. Heritage, John, and Marja Leena Sorjonen. 1994. “Constituting and Maintaining Activities across Sequences: And Prefacing as a Feature of Question Design.” Language in Society 23(1):1–29.
33. Horgan, Mike. 2005. “What Would You Say? Some Practices for Answering Questions in Telephone Survey Interviews.” Master’s thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Madison.
34. Houtkoop-Steenstra, Hanneke. 2000. “Establishing Rapport.” Pp. 128–53 in Interaction and the Standardized Survey Interview: The Living Questionnaire, by H. Houtkoop- Steenstra. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
35. Hyman, Herbert H. [1954] 1975. Interviewing in Social Research. Chicago: University of Chicago.
36. Jefferson, Gail. 1984. “On the Organization of Laughter in Talk about Troubles.” Pp. 346–69 in Structures of Social Action, edited by J. M. Atkinson, and J. Heritage. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
37. Jefferson, Gail. 1987. “On Exposed and Embedded Correction in Conversation.” Pp. 86–100 in Talk and Social Organisation, edited by G. Button, and J.R.E. Lee. Clevedon, United Kingdom: Multilingual Matters.
38. Kitzinger, Celia. 2013. “Repair.” Pp. 229–56 in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Sidnell, and T. Stivers. Chichester, United Kingdom: Blackwell.
39. Kovar, Mary Grace, and Patricia Royston. 1990. “Comment on ‘Interactional Troubles in Face-to-face Survey Interviews’.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 85(409):246–47.
40. Lavin, Danielle, and Douglas W. Maynard. 2001. “Standardization vs. Rapport: Respondent Laughter and Interviewer Reaction During Telephone Surveys.” American Sociological Review 66(3):453–79.
41. Levinson, Stephen C. 2013. “Action Formation and Ascription.” Pp. 103–30 in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Sidnell, and T. Stivers. Chichester, United Kingdom: Blackwell.
42. Lindström, Anna, and Marja-Leena Sorjonen. 2013. “Affiliation in Conversation.” Pp. 350–60 in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Sidnell, and T. Stivers. Chichester, United Kingdom: Blackwell.
43. Maynard, Douglas W., Jeremy Freese, and Nora Cate Schaeffer. 2010. “Calling for Participation: Requests, Blocking Moves, and Rational (Inter)Action in Survey Introductions.” American Sociological Review 75(5):791–814.
44. Maynard, Douglas W., and Courtney L. Marlaire. 1992. “Good Reasons for Bad Testing Performance: The Interactional Substrate of Educational Exams.” Qualitative Sociology 15(2):177–202.
45. Miller, Bill, and Steve Rollnick. 2002. Motivational Interviewing: Preparing People for Change. New York: Guilford.
46. Moore, Robert J., and Douglas W. Maynard. 2002. “Achieving Understanding in the Standardized Survey Interview: Repair Sequences.” Pp. 281–312 in Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview, edited by D. W. Maynard, H. Houtkoop-Steenstra, N. C. Schaeffer, and J. van der Zouwen. New York: John Wiley.
47. O’Muircheartaigh, Colm, and Pamela Campanelli. 1998. “The Relative Impact of Interviewer Effects and Sample Design Effects on Survey Precision.” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 161(1):63–77.
48. Pomerantz, Anita, and John Heritage. 2013. “Preference.” Pp. 210–28 in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Sidnell, and T. Stivers. Chichester, United Kingdom: Blackwell.
49. Ruusuvuori, Johanna. 2013. “Emotion, Affect and Conversation.” Pp. 330–49 in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Sidnell, and T. Stivers. Chichester, United Kingdom: Blackwell.
50. Schaeffer, Nora Cate. 1991. “Conversation with a Purpose—or Conversation? Interaction in the Standardized Interview.” Pp. 367–92 in Measurement Errors in Surveys, edited by P. P. Biemer, R. M. Groves, L. E. Lyberg, N. A. Mathiowetz, and S. Sudman. New York: Wiley.
51. Schaeffer, Nora Cate. 2000. “Asking Questions about Threatening Topics: A Selective Overview.” Pp. 105–22 in The Science of Self-Report: Implications for Research and Practice, edited by Christine A. Bachrach, Arthur A. Stone, Jared B. Jobe, Howard S. Kurtzman, and Virginia S. Cain. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
52. Schaeffer, Nora Cate, and Hong-Wen Charng. 1991. “Two Experiments in Simplifying Response Categories: Intensity Ratings and Behavioral Frequencies.” Sociological Perspectives 34(2):165–82.
53. Schaeffer, Nora Cate, and Jennifer Dykema. 2011a. “Questions for Surveys: Current Trends and Future Directions.” Public Opinion Quarterly 75(5):909–61.
54. Schaeffer, Nora Cate, and Jennifer Dykema. 2011b. “Response 1 to Fowler’s Chapter: Coding the Behavior of Interviewers and Respondents to Evaluate Survey Questions.” Pp. 23–39 in Question Evaluation Methods: Contributing to the Science of Data Quality, edited by J. Madans, K. Miller, A. Maitland, and G. Willis. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
55. Schaeffer, Nora Cate, Jennifer Dykema, and Douglas W. Maynard. 2010. “Interviewers and Interviewing.” Pp. 437–70 in Handbook of Survey Research, 2nd ed., edited by P. V. Marsden, and J. D. Wright. Bingley, United Kingdom: Emerald Group.
56. Schaeffer, Nora Cate, Dana Garbarski, Jeremy Freese, and Douglas W. Maynard. 2013. “An Interactional Model of the Call for Participation in the Survey Interview: Actions and Reactions in the Survey Recruitment Call.” Public Opinion Quarterly 77(1):323–51.
57. Schaeffer, Nora Cate, and Douglas W. Maynard. 1996. “From Paradigm to Prototype and Back Again: Interactive Aspects of Cognitive Processing in Survey Interviews.” Pp. 65–88 in Answering Questions: Methodology for Determining Cognitive and Communicative Processes in Survey Research, edited by N. E. Schwarz, and S. Sudman. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
58. Schaeffer, Nora Cate, and Douglas W. Maynard. 2008. “The Contemporary Standardized Survey Interview for Social Research.” Pp. 31–57 in Envisioning the Survey Interview of the Future, edited by F. G. Conrad, and M. F. Schober. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
59. Schnell, Rainer, and Frauke Kreuter. 2005. “Separating Interviewer and Sampling-point Effects.” Journal of Official Statistics 21(3):389–410.
60. Schober, Michael F., and Frederick G. Conrad. 1997. “Does Conversational Interviewing Reduce Survey Measurement Error?” Public Opinion Quarterly 61(4): 576–602.
61. Smit, Johannes H., Wil Dijkstra, and Johannes van der Zouwen. 1997. “Suggestive Interviewer Behaviour in Surveys: An Experimental Study.” Journal of Official Statistics 13(1):19–28.
62. Stivers, Tanya. 2013. “Sequence Organization.” Pp. 191–209 in The Handbook of Conversation Analysis, edited by J. Sidnell, and T. Stivers. Chichester, United Kingdom: Blackwell.
63. Suchman, Lucy, and Brigitte Jordan. 1990. “Interactional Troubles in Face-to-face Survey Interviews.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 85(409):232–53.
64. Tartter, Vivien C., and David Braun. 1994. “Hearing Smiles and Frowns in Normal and Whisper Registers.” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 96(4):2101–7.
65. Thornton, Arland, Deborah S. Freedman, and Donald Camburn. 1982. “Obtaining Respondent Cooperation in Family Panel Studies.” Sociological Methods and Research 11(1):33–51.
66. Tickle-Degnen, Linda, and Robert Rosenthal. 1990. “The Nature of Rapport and Its Nonverbal Correlates.” Psychological Inquiry 1(4):285–93.
67. Tourangeau, Roger, Lance J. Rips, and Kenneth A. Rasinski. 2000. The Psychology of Survey Response. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
68. Tourangeau, Roger, and Ting Yan. 2007. “Sensitive Questions in Surveys.” Psychological Bulletin 133(5):859–83.
69. Van der Zouwen, Johannes, and Wil Dijkstra. 2002. “Testing Questionnaires Using Interaction Coding.” Pp. 427–48 in Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview, edited by D. W. Maynard, H. Houtkoop-Steenstra, N. C. Schaeffer, and J. van der Zouwen. New York: John Wiley.
70. Viterna, Jocelyn S., and Douglas W. Maynard. 2002. “How Uniform Is Standardization? Variation within and across Survey Research Centers Regarding Protocols for Interviewing.” Pp. 365–401 in Standardization and Tacit Knowledge: Interaction and Practice in the Survey Interview, edited by D. W. Maynard, H. Houtkoop- Steenstra, N. C. Schaeffer, and J. van der Zouwen. New York: John Wiley.
71. Weiss, Carol H. 1968. “Validity of Welfare Mothers’ Interview Responses.” Public Opinion Quarterly 32:622–33.
72. Weiss, Carol H. 1970. “Interaction in the Research Interview: The Effects of Rapport on Response.” Pp. 17–20 in Proceedings of the Social Statistics Section of the American Statistical Association. Denver, CO: American Statistical Association.