Role Playing

Role playing is an educational technique that is used in the training of survey interviewers. It involves face-to-face or telephone interviewers practicing the tailored use of the introduction of the survey in which an attempt is made to gain cooperation from a respondent, and practicing the proper way to administer the questions to respondents, or both. Role playing generally takes place toward the end of training, after the interviewers have been methodically exposed to the entire questionnaire by the trainer, on a question-by-question basis. The role playing part of training may last as long as 2 hours depending on the length and complexity of the questionnaire. Interviewers generally enjoy the role playing part of training, in part because it allows for their active participation in the training process.

Role playing typically takes two forms. One is where the supervisor or trainer takes on the persona of a respondent and interviewers in the training session go through the introduction or the questionnaire, or both, in a round-robin fashion asking the questions to the trainer and going on to the next appropriate question depending on the answer just given by the trainer. The trainer often varies his or her persona while this is happening—sometimes being cooperative and other times being uncooperative when the introduction is being practiced, and sometimes being an “easy” respondent and others times being a “difficult” respondent when questions are being asked. The second form of role playing is where interviewers are paired up and take turns interviewing each other with the questionnaire. As this is taking place, supervisory personnel typically move around the room observing the practice, making tactful suggestions for improvement where appropriate [Page 768][Page 769]and being available to answer questions that might arise.

Role playing also is used in this “mock interviewing” fashion to help newly hired interviewers learn various basic interviewing skills. It also is used to help experienced or senior interviewers learn advanced interviewing techniques, such as with refusal avoidance training.