Douglas Maynard University of Wisconsin-Madison
Declining participation in survey interviews is a problem of urgent importance for much social science, and refusals account for an increasing proportion of nonresponse. In recent times, the difficulty of reaching potential respondents to request participation has increased, and these respondents are more likely to say they do not have time and/or that they are not interested. This research will complete a systematic inquiry into how response rates might be improved for computer-aided telephone surveys (CATIs) by identifying effective interviewer practices for soliciting survey participation. By applying the well developed procedures of conversation analysis (CA) to the data opportunity provided by the digital recordings of the 2004 administration of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS), the PI will develop coding tools to specify and measure how expertly introductions to surveys are done and how well they are tailored. From this, in a larger quantitative investigation, the research will estimate the extent to which different kinds of interviewer expertise and tailoring influence survey participation rates. The aim of the study is to better understand the moment-to-moment contingencies involved in obtaining survey participation.
The research combines both qualitative and quantitative investigation and is relevant to a number of social science and methodological areas, include sociology, social psychology, conversation analysis, survey methodology, and statistical modeling. The research has the potential to provide input for social psychological experimentation both in the lab and in the field and develop interaction coding instrumentation, and codes and processes that could potentially aid in increasing survey response rates through interviewer selection and training. Increasing response rates in surveys will lower survey costs and lead to samples that are more generalizable to wider populations.
