Race of Interviewer Effects in Telephone Surveys Preceding the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election

Abstract

Race of interviewer effects are presumed to occur in surveys because respondents answer questions differently depending on interviewer race. This article explored an alternative explanation: differential respondent recruitment. Data from telephone interviews conducted during the 2008 U.S. Presidential election campaign by major survey organizations (ABC News/Washington Post, CBS News/New York Times, and Gallup) indicate that African-American interviewers were more likely to elicit statements of the intent to vote for Barack Obama than White interviewers. But this effect occurred because African-American interviewers were more likely than White interviewers to elicit survey participation by African-American respondents, and/or White interviewers were more likely to elicit participation by White respondents. Thus, differences between interviewers in terms of responses obtained are not necessarily because of respondent lying. During most of the 2008 U.S. Presidential nomination and general election campaign season, Barack Obama consistently led John McCain and other Republican candidates in preelection polls (Gallup, 2008). But doubt was often expressed before that election because of concern about what was dubbed the ‘‘Bradley effect’’: a presumed tendency for respondents to overstate their support for an African-American candidate running against a White candidate (Berman, 2008; Carroll, 2008; Cillizza, 2008; Liasson, 2008; Zernike, 2008). The close resemblance of the final national preelection poll results that year to the government’s vote totals for the 2008 election led observers to conclude All correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jon A. Krosnick, McClatchy Hall, Stanford University, Bldg. 120, 450 Serra Mall, Stanford, CA 94305-2050, USA. E-mail: [email protected] D ow naded rom http/academ ic.p.com /ijpor/article-ct/31/2/220/4919655 by Snford Liraries user on 22 M ay 2020 that the Bradley effect did not occur (Frankovic, 2009; Langer et al., 2009; Zernike & Sussman, 2008), a finding consistent with careful analysis of polls done preceding other recent elections involving African-American candidates (Hopkins, 2009). A much larger body of research has explored another way that race might have affected the results of preelection polls that year and other surveys as well: race of interviewer effects. In this literature, researchers documented the influence of an interviewer’s race on the answers that people give to survey questions (West & Blom, 2017). This literature generally pointed to misreporting as the main mechanism behind this effect, attributing the difference in responses collected by different race interviewers to respondents altering their answers depending on who asks the questions (Anderson, Silver, & Abramson, 1988; Cotter, Cohen, & Coulter, 1982; Davis, 1997a, 1997b; Finkel, Guterbock, & Borg, 1991; Schaeffer, 1980). In this article, we explore whether such effects were apparent in data collected before the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, and we explore an alternative explanation for such effects: the impact of interviewer race on respondents’ decisions about whether to participate in a survey in the first place. Specifically, we explore whether African-American interviewers were more likely to elicit expressions of the intent to vote for Barack Obama than were White interviewers, and whether this might have occurred because AfricanAmerican interviewers elicited survey participation by African-American respondents at a higher rate than did White interviewers, and/or White interviewers elicited survey participation by White respondents at a higher rate than did African-American interviewers. This alternative explanation fits well with the recent work that more generally examined the effect of interviewer characteristics on various components of error stemming from the total survey error framework (Groves et al., 2009; see West & Blom, 2017; West, Kreuter, & Jaenichen, 2013; West & Olson, 2010). This line of work showed that between-interviewer variance is at least partly because of varying nonresponse error (e.g., different interviewers recruiting respondents with various demographic characteristics at different rates) in addition to measurement error (e.g., respondents adjusting their answers differently for different interviewers; West & Olson, 2010). This article adds to this line of work by exploring whether race of interviewer might cause interviewer-related nonresponse bias. We begin below by reviewing past studies of interviewer effects, and we propose theoretical accounts that could explain such effects. Then, we outline the explanation on which we focus and test it using data from 36 telephone surveys conducted before the 2008 U.S. Presidential election by ABC/ Washington Post, CBS/New York Times, and the Gallup Organization. R A C E O F I N T E R V I E W E R E F F E C T S 221 D ow naded rom http/academ ic.p.com /ijpor/article-ct/31/2/220/4919655 by Snford Liraries user on 22 M ay 2020 Past Studies on the Effects of Interviewer Race Evidence of interviewer effects was published early in the history of survey research (Cantril, 1944), and since then, >100 studies have explored the effects of interviewer race. Past studies found that assessments of attitudes, behaviors, political knowledge, and other constructs appear to have been affected by the race of an interviewer (Cotter, Cohen, & Coulter, 1982; Davis & Silver, 2003; Schaeffer, 1980). Many such illustrations involved questions that explicitly mentioned race. For example, African-American interviewers were shown to elicit more racially tolerant responses than did White interviewers (Hatchett & Schuman, 1975). Likewise, respondents expressed warmer feelings toward a racial group and said that they trusted members of that racial group more when interviewed by a member of that group than when interviewed by a member of a different racial group (Anderson, Silver, & Abramson, 1988; Schuman & Converse, 1971), and respondents were more likely to say they supported a political candidate when the interviewer shared the candidate’s race than when the interviewer did not share the candidate’s race (Davis, 1997b; Finkel, Guterbock, & Borg, 1991). Other studies suggest that the race of an interviewer can also affect answers to questions that do not explicitly mention racial groups (Campbell, 1981; Cotter, Cohen, & Coulter, 1982; Schuman & Converse, 1971; Weeks & Moore, 1981). For example, when interviewed by an African-American interviewer and naming their favorite actors, African-American respondents listed more African-Americans and fewer Whites than when interviewed by White interviewers (Schuman & Converse, 1971). Furthermore, when interviewed by Whites, African-American respondents reported warmer feelings toward Whites than when interviewed by an African-American (Anderson, Silver, & Abramson, 1988). Conversely, African-Americans were more likely to express more pro-African-American attitudes and higher racial consciousness when interviewed by African-Americans than when interviewed by Whites (Davis, 1997a). Possible Mechanisms of Interviewer Race on Survey Responses A number of possible explanations might account for these effects of interviewer race. One mechanism involves the rule of conversational politeness (Campbell, 1981; Kane & Macaulay, 1993; Schuman & Converse, 1971). The interaction between a respondent and an interviewer is a conversation, and respondents approach it as if the usual rules of conversations apply (Holbrook et al., 2000). One such rule, especially in conversations with strangers, is to be respectful and polite and not to insult one’s conversational partner (Leech, 1983). Respondents might feel that it would be impolite to I N T E R N A T I O N A L J O U R N A L O F P U B L I C O P I N I O N R E S E A R C H 222 D ow naded rom http/academ ic.p.com /ijpor/article-ct/31/2/220/4919655 by Snford Liraries user on 22 M ay 2020 express an attitude or intended behavior that may signal disapproval of a social group to which the interviewer belongs. For example, if respondents assume that most African-Americans support most African-American candidates running for public office, then expressing a negative evaluation of such a candidate or expressing an intention to vote against such a candidate might be perceived as impolite when talking to an African-American interviewer. This might lead a respondent to decline to answer a question (e.g., by saying that he/she has not made up his/her mind yet about for whom to vote) or perhaps by expressing an intention to vote for an African-American candidate when interviewed by an AfricaAmerican interviewer. Alternatively, interviewer effects might occur because of automatic aspects of the cognitive process by which survey responses are constructed. When respondents are asked a question to which they do not have a prestored answer in long-term memory, they can retrieve pieces of information from memory to build an answer (Tourangeau, Rips, & Rasinski, 2000; Zaller & Feldman, 1992). This process can be affected by the social context in which the respondent is asked the question, including the interviewer’s characteristics (Nelson & Norton, 2005; Rasinski et al., 2005; Srull & Wyer, 1989). For example, interacting with a professional, competent, and friendly AfricanAmerican interviewer might prime favorable images of African-Americans in the mind of a respondent during the interview. These favorable images might enhance a respondent’s inclination to express favorable opinions of African-Americans generally and a greater likelihood of voting for an African-American candidate when interviewed by an African-American interviewer than when interviewed by a White interviewer (Huddy et al., 1997; Krysan & Couper, 2003). An Alternative Explanation All of the above explanations assert that the race of an interviewer can influence the process by which a respondent gener