The aim of this 3-year ESRC funded project is to analyse interviewer effects on wave non-response in longitudinal surveys. The presence of significant interviewer effects on non-response in both cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys has been confirmed across several studies.
However, further research is required to identify interviewer characteristics which explain some of this variation as well as interaction effects between sample members and interviewers. Moreover, for longitudinal studies research is needed to identify the relative importance of interviewers across several waves.
The main research questions are: is the probability of a respondent refusal at a particular wave dependent on the interviewer allocated? What is the relative importance of interviewers from different waves? Which interviewer-level variables explain part of this variation? Are there interaction effects between interviewer and respondent characteristics? Do any individual-level or area-level predictors of non-response vary randomly across interviewers?
Multilevel modeling techniques are employed to analyse interviewer effects across different waves. The results may be used to inform best practices regarding interviewer allocation and training with the aim of reducing non-response in longitudinal surveys.