Ocena pracy ankieterów a niektóre ich cechy społeczno-demograficzne

Abstract

Secondary analysis of 878 questionnaires from interviews performed by the group of 47 interviewers was made in order to find out the relationship between their sex, education, interviewing experience and the quality of their work as measured by the observance of interviewing instructions. Four-points scale of quality of work was constructed (“very good”, “good”, “satisfactory”, “unsatisfactory”), and applied to selected three questions from the questionnaires used in the survey on leisure activities of inhabitants of the city of Cracow in 1968. Interviewers’ experience was measured by the five-points scale depending on the number of surveys in which they had participated. Among 878 questionnaires, 41% were “very good”, 44% “good”, 13% “satisfactory” and 2% “unsatisfactory”. Older interviewers turned out to be positively better than younger ones (mean scorings 4.4 and 4.1 respectively). In general, men were slightly better (4.3) than women (4.2). The strongest variance appeared among students. While the mean for the whole group was 4.2, the means for particular sub-groups differed considerably. The best scoring went to the ethnographers (4.8), the worst one to the students of law and economics (3.6). In general, females did their interviews worse (4.2) than males (4.4). Students of sociology were average (men: 4.5, women: 4.3). Among non-students the differences in the quality of work are less marked, although here also the first place went to ethnographers (4.4) before sociologists (4.3) and the rest (4.2); women were slightly better (4.3) than men (4.2). Interviewers with small or no experience obtained identical marks (4.1); also identical, but generally higher marks went to interviewers with average and great experience (4.5); slightly worse marks received those with the greatest experience (4.2). The best were male interviewers who had 4 to 10 surveys in their practice; beginners and those with small experience, were poor (4.0 and 4.1) but only slightly worse than those with the greatest interviewing experience (4.2). During five weeks of their field work, the best work was being performed by interviewers within the first (4.3) and fourth weeks (4.4); the worst one within the last week (4.1); gradual deterioration of the quality of work was characteristic for female interviewers while males, in the course of the survey, slightly improved their performance. The most steady and at the same time, the highest level of performance was achieved by interviewers with average experience