Using Interviewer-respondent Interaction Coding as a Manipulation Check on Interviewer Behavior in Persuading CATI Respondents

Abstract

This paper shows how interaction coding of interviewer-respondent interactions was used to perform manipulation checks of CATI interviewer behavior in experimental studies. An experiment in which interviewers were instructed to persuade potential respondents by means of a personal style or a formal style showed no significant effects of the persuasion style on survey participation. By means of interviewer-respondent interaction analysis, we studied the interviews in more depth focusing on the compliance of interviewers with the instructions. First, we found that many respondents immediately complied, but when respondents were reluctant, using any form of persuasion was better than none. Second, interviewers also had success in gaining cooperation when they referred to an argument that they had not been instructed to use. In conclusion, we assume that interviewers using arguments in which they were trained develop too much of an unauthentic routine in expressing these arguments, whereas using arguments outside instructions are likely to be expressed in a more natural, spontaneous way and are therefore more convincing. In addition, this study shows that it is useful to include behavior coding as a manipulation check in experiments involving interviewer behavior.