Event History Analysis of Interviewer and Respondent Survey Behavior

James M. Lepkowski, Vivian Siu, and Justin Fisher

The survey interview may be viewed as a longitudinal sequence of conversational exchanges between an interviewer and a respondent. Interviewer and respondent behavior across interview exchanges reflect the dynamics of the interview and the mutual effects of interviewer behavior on respondents, and respondents on interviewer behavior. Event history models can be used to examine the timing of these behaviors and whether respondents modify the way they answer questions in response to interviewer behaviors, or whether interviewers modify their interviewing techniques in response to respondent behaviors.

A total of 297 interviews from a sample survey of members of a health maintenance organization in a metropolitan area in the United States were, with subject permission, tape recorded. Survey interviewers not participating in the survey interviews were trained to listen to the tapes and record the presence of approximately 30 different types of interviewer and respondent behaviors at each question asked in the interview. Respondent behaviors such as laughter during an exchange and interrupting the reading of the question are examined as events occurring during the interview using standard event history analysis methods. Cox proportional hazard models illustrate the association of respondent and interviewer characteristics on duration times. Duration times to interruption vary across gender and race of respondents and gender and race of interviewer, and by the occurrence of the event (i.e. first, second, third, etc.). The occurrence of a question characteristic as a time varying covariate for interruption is also examined. Interrupting question reading is shown empirically to be a function of exposure to questions that exhibit wording that is lengthy or contains numerous clauses that qualify the topic of the question.