Interviewer Effects in Telephone Surveys

The interviewer effects for selected items from a number of national polls conducted by CBS News and The New York Times in 1980 were examined. These effects were found to be generally quite small and somewhat inconsistent from poll to poll. The inconsistencies were explained by variable associations with the nonrandom regional distribution of respondents and the political context in which the mea surements were obtained. There was some evidence of respondent-interviewer interactions for certain items.