Quantitative conversations: the importance of developing rapport in standardised interviewing

© 2014, The Author(s). When developing household surveys, much emphasis is understandably placed on developing survey instruments that can elicit accurate and comparable responses. In order to ensure that carefully crafted questions are not undermined by ‘interviewer effects’, standardised interviewing tends to be utilised in preference to conversational techniques. However, by drawing on a behaviour coding analysis of survey paradata arising from the 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey we show that in practice standardised survey interviewing often involves extensive unscripted conversation between the interviewer and the respondent. Whilst these interactions can enhance response accuracy, cooperation and ethicality, unscripted conversations can also be problematic in terms of survey reliability and the ethical conduct of survey interviews, as well as raising more basic epistemological questions concerning the degree of standardisation typically assumed within survey research. We conclude that better training in conversational techniques is necessary, even when applying standardised interviewing methodologies. We also draw out some theoretical implications regarding the usefulness of the qualitative–quantitative dichotomy

Population Change in the Midwest: Nonmetro Population Growth Lags Metro Increase

The Midwest posted population growth in both its nonmetro and metro areas from 1990 to 2000, but nonmetro areas with larger cities and closer to metro centers were more likely to gain residents than were completely rural counties. Nonmetro counties closer to urban areas were also less likely to lose youth and more likely to gain residents of working age. The Midwest saw a dramatic increase in Hispanic residents from 1990 to 2000, with numbers at least doubling in many nonmetro counties

\u27SHOOT THEM IF THEY WON\u27T WORK\u27: A STUDY OF SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, ECONOMIC ASPIRATIONS, AND ATTITUDES TOWARD POVERTY, THE POOR, AND PUBLIC DEPENDENCE

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