Caucasian respondents reported lower levels of acceptance of African-Americans to Caucasian interviewers than to African-American interviewers. African-Americans reported lower levels of satisfaction with race relations to African-American interviewers than to Caucasian interviewers. One of the earliest findings of interviewer effects by race, dating to World War II, was that answers to questions about race relations were strongly impacted by the races of the interviewer and respondent ( Hyman et al., 1954). They are often attributed even in telephone interviewing and not just in face-to-face situations. Much research has been conducted on the effects of these statuses on interview outcomes precisely because they are considered to be master ascribed statuses that are both readily observed and ubiquitous in all interactions.
These statuses are often considered to be especially important when questions in the interview touch on topics closely related to them.
#Role models script full#
The norms governing the interviewer are likewise oriented to maximizing certain qualities (or values) of the data – for example, norms that call for a common stimulus to achieve validity across respondents or other norms that emphasize supportive interaction to produce full and complete responses.Ī common application of role theory to the interview situation is a concern with bias introduced by other social statuses in a person's status set – the most obvious and frequently researched being the ascribed and highly visible social statuses of race, gender, and age. In short, normative behavior is goal oriented. Role theory asserts that the norms governing interaction are there for the purpose of realizing specified goals out of the interaction. The different goals of the interview (more fully revelatory data vs unbiased data) may come into conflict and suggest different contradictory norms, for example, about how much personal information the interviewer should reveal to the respondent in the interview situation.
For example, one goal may be to get as much revelatory information as possible verses another goal to not bias the respondent's answers. However, even these commonplace, widely shared norms may come into question, as there may be conflict among the different goals for the interview. Sometimes there are widely accepted norms defining the ideal interviewer role such as one should not reveal personal information that might thereby bias the respondent's responses ( Gordon, 1975). The simplest norms are 10 of those that are ‘taken for granted’ such as who asks the questions and who gives the answers.
To be ‘trained’ as an interviewer is to learn a set of normative expectations about how one should interact with a respondent. How well one knows these roles, that is, knows the normative expectations for behavior associated with the respective roles, is a function of one's prior experience and knowledge gained either first hand or through vicarious observations – in the media, through cartoons, through conversations, or in the classroom. The roles or statuses most clearly central here are those of ‘interviewer’ and ‘respondent’ themselves. Role theory begins with a set of normative expectations that are presumed to define particular positions or statuses in social structure and their corresponding roles or behaviors in interaction with others. Albert Hunter, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015 Role Theory
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