Interviewer Training

Training Elements and Expectations

Initial training for new interviewers provides the fundamentals, such as the nature of interview work, workplace ethics (e.g. attendance, professionalism), using computer-assisted interviewing (CATI or CAPI) systems, and emphasizing standardized interviewing techniques. Procedures for training interviewers should ideally focus on all the skills for basic interviewing needed across most surveys in general.

For maximum effectiveness, interviewer training must convey performance expectations for interview work and teach interviewers how to conduct a standardized interview. Interviewer training describes acceptable methods for questioning respondents and how to collect interview information with a high degree of [Page 382]accuracy and reliability. Because interviewers are the intermediaries of questionnaires (and questions) to respondents, they can also be an important source of error in the survey process. The crux of interviewer training then is to reduce interviewer-mediated error. This is accomplished by educating interviewers and demonstrating proper interviewing techniques, such as how to read questions as worded, neutrally probe respondents, relate to respondents so as not to introduce bias to survey answers, and record answers as accurately as possible. Overall, trainings should reinforce interviewers' interactions with respondents as interper-sonally neutral while asking interview questions. Interviewer training should not only introduce and explain basic interviewing concepts but also provide time for deliberative practice of skills. Trainees gain knowledge, skill, and confidence through observation and participation in activities that mimic real interviewing.

Basic and Project-Specific Training

In a 2007 study of telephone survey research organizations, John Tarnai and Danna Moore found that almost all such organizations use trainings to increase interviewing skill and knowledge and that new interviewers are required to participate in training before they can begin calling. Most organizations have developed trainings that include written procedures for standardizing interviewing and on average spend about 6 hours per interviewer to cover basic interviewing training and practice. Table 1 displays the main topics and activities regularly covered in basic introductory trainings by telephone survey organizations (of note, these same topics and activities essentially apply to face-to-face interviewing).

Many organizations also regularly hold project-specific trainings, which detail requirements and circumstances on individual surveys. Trainings may also be expanded to cover complex survey situations; for example, questionnaires that have complex conditional skip patterns or that screen for eligible survey respondents often require additional training for interviewers. Other examples of the need for project-specific training are when the survey topic is sensitive or includes respondents classified as members of a vulnerable or protected population. Both of these situations will generally require talking about human subject research, confidentiality, the rights of respondents, and special issues raised by respondents.

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