What does it mean to be an interviewer? Exploring fieldwork experiences of survey interviewers in Lithuania

Abstract

Interviewers play a focal role when a survey is administered in a form of in-person (face-to-face) interviews. Survey literature covers several advantages that interviewer-moderated surveys have regarding data quality. There is more control over data collection process in general, a better fulfilment of a questionnaire, a possibility to administer longer questionnaires or survey complex issues, a possibility to provide support for respondents during an interview (e.g., explain a task or probe for an answer); also, higher response rates of face-to-face surveys may also be linked with the work of interviewers. Next to these advantages, there are also challenges posed by the presence of an interviewer. Interviewers may have diverse effects on respondents’ responses thus causing biases in survey data. Both advantages and challenges indicate that face-to-face surveys rely heavily on the quality of interviewer work as leading towards higher or lower quality of data. There have been many attempts to discuss and introduce preventive measures for potential problems in interviewer work, such as trainings or guidelines for interviewers as well as mechanism of control over their work. However, there is less literature that turns towards experiences of interviewers themselves and highlights their perspective on what they see as key preconditions for success in their work and what are the main challenges they face when administering face-to-face surveys. The paper presents results of a qualitative research conducted in Lithuania. Based on in-depth individual interviews with experienced survey interviewers, we aimed to understand the reality of survey-field work from the perspective of interviewers and how it links to the quality of survey data. In the presentation, we will focus on how interviewers and other involved parties (e.g., respondents, employers) perceive interviewer work; what motivates and de-motivates interviewers; what are the risks that interviewers face in their work as well as what support they receive (or do not receive); what are the key factors that they see as fostering or hindering the quality of their work.