The combination of survey data with more objective information, such as administrative
records, is a promising innovation within social science research. The advantages of such
projects are manifold, but implementing them also bears challenges to be considered.
For example, the survey respondents typically have to consent to the linking of external
data sources and interviewers have to feel comfortable with this task.
This dissertation investigates whether and to what extent the interviewers have an influence
on the willingness of the respondents to participate in two new projects within
the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Both projects had
the goal to reduce the burden for respondents and to increase the data quality by linking
the survey data with additional, more objective data. Both linkages required the
interviewers to collect respondents’ written consent during the interview.
The starting point of this dissertation is the question of what influences respondents’
decisions to consent to link their survey answers with administrative data. Three different
areas are considered: characteristics of the respondents, the interviewers, and the
interaction between respondents and interviewers. The results suggest that although
respondent and household characteristics are important, a large part of the variation
is explained by the interviewers. However, the information available about interviewers
in SHARE is limited to a few demographic characteristics. Therefore, it is difficult to
identify key interviewer characteristics that influence the consent process.
To close this research gap, a detailed interviewer survey was developed and implemented
in SHARE. This survey covers four different dimensions of interviewer characteristics:
interviewers’ attitudes, their own behavior, experiences in surveys and special measurements,
and their expectations regarding their success. These dimensions are applied to
several aspects of the survey process, such as unit or item nonresponse as well as the
specific projects of the corresponding SHARE questionnaire.
The information collected in the interviewer survey is then used to analyze interviewer
effects on respondents’ willingness to consent to the collection of blood samples. Those
samples are analyzed in a laboratory and the results linked with the survey data. Interviewers’
experience and their expectations are of special interest, because as these are
two characteristics that can be influenced during interviewer training and selection. The
results in this dissertation show that the interviewers have a considerable effect on respondents’
consent to the collection of biomarkers. Moreover, the information collected
in the interviewer survey can explain most of the variance on the interviewer level.
A motivation for linking survey data with more objective data is the assumption that
survey data suffer from recall error. In the last step, the overlap of information collected
in the survey and provided in the administrative records is used to analyze recall error in
the year of retirement. The comparison of the two datasets shows that most of respondents
remember the year they retired correctly. Nevertheless, a considerable proportion
of respondents make recall errors. Characteristics can be identified which increase the
likelihood of a misreport, However, the error seems to be unsystematic, meaning that
no pattern of reporting the event of retirement too late or too early is found.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MUENCHEN/oai:edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de:17966 |
| Date | 15 December 2014 |
| Creators | Korbmacher, Julie M. |
| Publisher | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München |
| Source Sets | Digitale Hochschulschriften der LMU |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, NonPeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Relation | http://edoc.ub.uni-muenchen.de/17966/ |
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