SSH 301 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Double Negative, Social Desirability Bias

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Social Sciences and Humanities
• Course: SSH 301
• Professor: Julie Tomiak

Document Summary

Qualitative: less structures, more open-ended, greater interest in interviewee"s perspectives and concerns, going off on tangents in encouraged, flexible (many topics), rich (detailed answers) Intra-interviewer variability; an interviewer is not consistent in asking questions or recording answers (with the same respondent or a different one) Inter-interviewer variability; lack of consistency in asking questions or recording answers between different interviewers. Interviewer effects: reactive effects are part of any research process, structured interviews have to deal with interviewer effects: The characteristics of the interviewer may influence the responses given. Gender, class, and race of the interviewer are key reactive issues. Face to face interviewing is the preferred method in academic research. Data gathered through these is agued to be a superior quality to telephone interviews. Higher response and completion rates (on the phone someone may hang up before the interview ends, people generally will not walk out of an interview because it feels more like a conversation: telephone.