Abstract
This thesis is concerned with four major factors which have to do with the interviewer effect upon the interviewee response. They are the interviewing ability, opinion, and attitude complex of an interviewer, and the reliability an interviewee puts upon him.
The interviewees of this investigation are the farmers of two village communities near Kanazawa city, and they are interviewed by light sociology students of Kanazawa University.
The matters for investigation are in reference to the attitudes of these farmers toward the habits and customs in the rural community and the improvement of agriculture. We adopted a half-split method to verify the interviewer effect. The interviewees are divided into two groups which are expected to produce the similar results. One of the two groups is interviewed by the interviewers with a certain trait, and the other by the interviewers with another trait. As a result, if there appears some difference between them we may safely recognize the influence of “interviewer bias.”
As for the interviewing ability, we separated the interviewers into an “able group” and a “foor group.” As regards the opinion, the interviewers possessing a collectivist attitude are separated from those possessing an individualist attitude. Regarding the attitude structure, there are interviewers of logical and consistent type and of inconsistent type. Finally, from the view-point of reliability or rapport, we made one group of those who come from the country and another of those who were born in cities. These two sets of interviewers in each of four factors, which are related to “interviewer effect”, investigated half of the interviewees respectively.
Although they do not bear close statistical examination, the results show that four factors in question seem to influence the responses of interviewees to some extent. Where an interviewer exerts an influence, it is a very difficult question to ascertain what factors functions in what way. The results of the investigation, however, suggest that the analysis of “ambiguous” “answers” will provide a key to the solution of the matter.
An able interviewer will be able to crystallize such ambiguous answers by repeating questions over and again. Hence there is an increase of the number of “Yes” or “No” responses. The village-born interviewers, whose reliability is considered high among the farmers interviewed in this investigation, are apt to make the meaning of the question understood well, to grasp what their respondents mean. And also the respondents are likely to express their opinions quite frankly. Therefore, there is a decrease of ambiguous answers. Looking at the influence of an interviewer's opinion, we can point out that in case he meets with equivocal answers, he is tempted to classify and interpret adjusting them to his own opinion.
Referring to the effect of attitudinal make-up, we can discern the tendency of logical-and- consistent- type interviewers judging and classifying vague answers into definite and consistent ones in case an questionnaire is composed so that a set of items may elicit consistent responses in the same direction.
