<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p> In this article, we investigate the relationship between interviewer travel behavior and field outcomes, such as contact rates, response rates, and contact attempts in two studies, the National Survey of Family Growth and the Health and Retirement Study. Using call record paradata that have been aggregated to interviewer-day levels, we examine two important cost drivers as measures of interviewer travel behavior: the distance that interviewers travel to segments and the number of segments visited on an interviewer-day. We explore several predictors of these measures of travel - the geographic size of the sampled areas, measures of urbanicity, and other sample and interviewer characteristics. We also explore the relationship between travel and field outcomes, such as the number of contact attempts made and response rates.We find that the number of segments that are visited on each interviewer-day has a strong association with field outcomes, but the number of miles travelled does not. These findings suggest that survey organizations should routinely monitor the number of segments that interviewers visit, and that more direct measurement of interviewer travel behavior is needed.</p></abstract>

In this article, we investigate the relationship between interviewer travel behavior and field outcomes, such as contact rates, response rates, and contact attempts in two studies, the National Survey of Family Growth and the Health and Retirement Study. Using call record paradata that have been aggregated to interviewer-day levels, we examine two important cost drivers as measures of interviewer travel behavior: the distance that interviewers travel to segments and the number of segments visited on an interviewer-day. We explore several predictors of these measures of travel - the geographic size of the sampled areas, measures of urbanicity, and other sample and interviewer characteristics. We also explore the relationship between travel and field outcomes, such as the number of contact attempts made and response rates.We find that the number of segments that are visited on each interviewer-day has a strong association with field outcomes, but the number of miles travelled does not. These findings suggest that survey organizations should routinely monitor the number of segments that interviewers visit, and that more direct measurement of interviewer travel behavior is needed.

An Analysis of Interviewer Travel and Field Outcomes in Two Field Surveys

Journal of Official Statistics

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

{"article-title":"An Analysis of Interviewer Travel and Field Outcomes in Two Field Surveys"}

In this article, we investigate the relationship between interviewer travel behavior and field outcomes, such as contact rates, response rates, and contact...

An Analysis of Interviewer Travel and Field Outcomes in Two Field Surveys

Published Online: Mar 01, 2018

Page range: 211 - 237

Received: Feb 01, 2014

Accepted: Nov 01, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jos-2018-0010

Keywords
Interviewer travel, survey costs, nonresponse, paradata

© by James Wagner

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

An Analysis of Interviewer Travel and Field Outcomes in Two Field Surveys

Published Online: Mar 01, 2018

Page range: 211 - 237

Received: Feb 01, 2014

Accepted: Nov 01, 2017

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/jos-2018-0010

KeywordsInterviewer travel, survey costs, nonresponse, paradata

© by James Wagner

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
Interviewer travel, survey costs, nonresponse, paradata