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Do interviewers moderate the effect of monetary incentives on response rates in household interview surveys?

Do interviewers moderate the effect of monetary incentives on response rates in household interview surveys?
Do interviewers moderate the effect of monetary incentives on response rates in household interview surveys?
As citizens around the world become ever more reluctant to respond to survey interview requests, incentives are playing an increasingly important role in maintaining response rates. In face-to-face surveys, interviewers are the key conduit of information about the existence and level of any incentive offered and, therefore, potentially moderate the effectiveness with which an incentive translates non-productive addresses into interviews. Yet, while the existing literature on the effects of incentives on response rates is substantial, little is currently known about the role of interviewers in determining whether or not incentives are effective. In this paper, we apply multilevel models to three different face-to-face interview surveys from the UK, which vary in their sample designs and incentive levels, to assess whether some interviewers are more successful than others in using incentives to leverage cooperation. Additionally, we link the response outcome data to measures of interviewer characteristics to investigate whether interviewer variability on this dimension is systematically related to level of experience and demographic characteristics. Our results show significant and substantial variability between interviewers in the effectiveness of monetary incentives on the probability of cooperation across all three surveys. However, none of the interviewer characteristics considered are significantly associated with more or less successful interviewers.
Face-To-face, Incentives, Interviewers, Multilevel
2325-0984
264-284
Kibuchi, Eliud
a8e48182-8b0a-48f9-8c53-f610726b0974
Sturgis, Patrick
b9f6b40c-50d2-4117-805a-577b501d0b3c
Durrant, Gabriele
14fcc787-2666-46f2-a097-e4b98a210610
Maslovskaya, Olga
9c979052-e9d7-4400-a657-38f1f9cd74d0
Kibuchi, Eliud
a8e48182-8b0a-48f9-8c53-f610726b0974
Sturgis, Patrick
b9f6b40c-50d2-4117-805a-577b501d0b3c
Durrant, Gabriele
14fcc787-2666-46f2-a097-e4b98a210610
Maslovskaya, Olga
9c979052-e9d7-4400-a657-38f1f9cd74d0

Kibuchi, Eliud, Sturgis, Patrick, Durrant, Gabriele and Maslovskaya, Olga (2020) Do interviewers moderate the effect of monetary incentives on response rates in household interview surveys? Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology, 8 (2), 264-284. (doi:10.1093/jssam/smy026).

Record type: Article

Abstract

As citizens around the world become ever more reluctant to respond to survey interview requests, incentives are playing an increasingly important role in maintaining response rates. In face-to-face surveys, interviewers are the key conduit of information about the existence and level of any incentive offered and, therefore, potentially moderate the effectiveness with which an incentive translates non-productive addresses into interviews. Yet, while the existing literature on the effects of incentives on response rates is substantial, little is currently known about the role of interviewers in determining whether or not incentives are effective. In this paper, we apply multilevel models to three different face-to-face interview surveys from the UK, which vary in their sample designs and incentive levels, to assess whether some interviewers are more successful than others in using incentives to leverage cooperation. Additionally, we link the response outcome data to measures of interviewer characteristics to investigate whether interviewer variability on this dimension is systematically related to level of experience and demographic characteristics. Our results show significant and substantial variability between interviewers in the effectiveness of monetary incentives on the probability of cooperation across all three surveys. However, none of the interviewer characteristics considered are significantly associated with more or less successful interviewers.

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Accepted/In Press date: 12 October 2018
e-pub ahead of print date: 11 January 2019
Published date: 1 April 2020
Additional Information: Funding Information: This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of Work package 1 of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (2014-2019), grant number ES/ L008351/1; and the Economic and Social Research Council PhD Studentship grant number ES/ J500161/1. *Address correspondence to Eliud Kibuchi, ESRC National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) and Department of Social Statistics and Demography, School of Economic, Social and Political Sciences, University of Southampton, Highfield Campus, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK; E-mail: emk1g15@soton.ac.uk. Publisher Copyright: © 2019 The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public Opinion Research.
Keywords: Face-To-face, Incentives, Interviewers, Multilevel

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 426486
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/426486
ISSN: 2325-0984
PURE UUID: d8045960-47d8-49df-af8c-3cac620cdae6
ORCID for Patrick Sturgis: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-1180-3493
ORCID for Gabriele Durrant: ORCID iD orcid.org/0009-0001-3436-1512
ORCID for Olga Maslovskaya: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0003-3814-810X

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Date deposited: 28 Nov 2018 17:30
Last modified: 18 May 2024 04:01

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Author: Eliud Kibuchi
Author: Patrick Sturgis ORCID iD

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