The interviewer effect when there is an education gap with the respondent: Evidence from a survey on biotechnology in Taiwan

Survey methodologists are concerned that the interviewer’s characteristics may affect respondents’ answers. This paper investigates how the interviewer’s education interacts with the respondent’s perceptions and in turn affects the latter’s responses to hard questions in a biotechnology survey in Taiwan. Our results indicate that respondents with little education (junior high school or below) react to highly-educated interviewers by giving more substantive answers to both knowledge questions and attitude questions. These findings are consistent with findings in the literature on social psychology whereby the respondents can infer from the interviewer’s appearance and behavior whether the latter seems more knowledgeable than themselves, and that in interacting with someone with much more education, the one with little education senses his or her inferiority and tries to conform to the perceived expectations.