The Impact of Interviewers on Subjective Status Identification:

A Comparison of Face-to-Face Interviewing and Mail Survey

Abstract

In this paper, I demonstrate that the mode of data collection affects the response to questions about “subjective status identification” by comparing two surveys that were conducted in the same year, with the same questions about “subjective status identification,” but with different modes of data collection. The result shows that the paper and pencil interview (PAPI) respondents expressed higher subjective status identification than mail survey respondents after controlling for sex, age, and socioeconomic status. This outcome suggests that the difference between the two modes of data collection, especially the presence of interviewers, causes measurement errors.
Next, I examine whether the difference obtained above is affected by the presence of interviewers, and, if so, what kind of responses to the questions about subjective status identification are socially desirable or meant to show politeness to the interviewers. It is observed that the tendency to answer “medium” is socially desirable or considered to be polite in male samples, and the same is true of “more highly” in female samples. These results mean that the responses to questions about subjective status identification are biased toward being higher in face-to-face interviews and affected by the impact of the interviewers' presence.