Interviewer Expectation Effects: A Replication and Extension

Interviewers' evaluations of the general difficulty of a surveyhave no effect on the cooperation rate they obtain, but do affectresponses to individual questions. Although these effects arenot large, interviewers who expect more difficulty with a study,or who expect certain parts of it to be difficult to ask, tendto get higher nonresponse rates tosensitive questions and lowerestimates of sensitive behavior. Such expectations affectedone of the experimental manipulations in the informed consentstudy, but not enough to account for the effects of the experimentalvariable. Eleanor Singer is a Senior Research Associate at theColumbia Center for the Social Sciences and Editor of The PublicOpinion Quarterly. Luane Kohnke-Aguirre is Sampling Managerat Yankelovich, Skelly, and White, Inc. Charles F. Cannell,Program Director atthe Survey Research Center of the Institutefor Social Research, University of Michigan, refereed the evaluationof this article.