Interview Rapport and Interviewer Clerical Performance

Abstract

Previous studies of interviewer performance have mostly focused on its association with interviewer characteristics. Little attention has been devoted to role-restricted variables such as interview rapport. This paper examines the effect of interview rapport on interviewer clerical performance. Interview rapport is based on the interviewer's evaluation of a respondent's cooperativeness during an interview, while interviewer clerical performance is measured by six answer-recording behaviors. Four datasets analyzed were from Taiwan Social Change Survey (TSCS) conducted in 2000 and 2001. A two-level Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM2) was used recognizing the possible importance of interviewer effects.The analysis of the combined data showed that interview rapport exerts not only positive linear effect but also negative curvilinear effect on interviewer clerical performance. The estimated coefficient suggested that interviewer performance increase with rapport but decline after the rapport scores was more than 16. A modification of the measurement of interview rapport and interviewer performance as well as conceptual framework was discussed.