The influence of interviewers’ contact behavior on the contact and cooperation rate in face-to-face household surveys

In surveys, interviewers serve as the agents of data collection. Their task includes contacting the target persons, gaining their cooperation, and conducting the interviews according to the rules of standardized interviewing. Interviewers are not equally successful at doing their job. They differ both in the quality of the data collected and in the response rate they achieve (Biemer & Lyberg, 2003, pp. 110–11, p. 156ff.). It is often difficult to distinguish to what extent these differences arise from differences among interviewers or from differences between the areas (and the target persons, living in these areas) assigned to the interviewers. Research using interpenetrated sample designs, however, has shown that interviewer effects can remain strong even when area effects are controlled (Campanelli & O’Muircheartaigh, 1999).