ABSTRACT
Interviewers are important actors in telephone surveys. The within-survey effect of experience on interview length is generally attributed to interviewer learning effects. This chapter draws on two nationally representative US telephone surveys of adults. Both surveys were audio-recorded and transcribed. Interviewer and respondent behaviors were coded at the conversational turn level, allowing a detailed examination of the changes in interviewer behaviors over the course of the field period. The chapter focuses on interviewer behaviors, as the learning hypothesis focuses primarily on changes by the interviewer, although interviewer behaviors inevitably affect respondent behaviors as well. It examines two sets of dependent variables: interviewer behaviors and interview length in minutes. How interviewer behaviors are related to interview length is more complicated than simply the number of questions on which these behaviors occur. Interviewers do change behaviors and that these behaviors partially explain changes in interview length over the field period.
