Effect of Interviewers' Sex on Interview Responses

T HE HOMOGENEITY of interviewing staffs in sex, age, socioeconomic status, and education has concerned survey researchers for some time.Eighteen years ago, in a summary of the composition of the field staffs of the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), the Gallup and Roper organizations, and other survey re- search organizations, Sheatsley noted (1):... the composition of most national field staffs has dangerous implications for survey bias arising out of the interviewing situation.We have a condition in which the great bulk of market and opinion research interviewing today is conducted by women talking to men, by college graduiates talking to the uneducated, by upper-middle-class individuals talking to those of low socio-economic status, by younger people talking to the increasingly larger old-age groups, by white persons talking to Negroes and by city dwellers talking to rural folk.Turning specifically to the factor of the sex of interviewers in health surveys, however, the picture is more varied.Of the hundred or so inter- viewers in the U.S.