An interdisciplinary look at interaction in the standardized survey interview

This volume presents a theoretical and empirical inquiry into the interaction between interviewers and respondents in standardized research interviews. The editors include a range of articles that showcase the perspectives of conversation analysts, ethnomethodologists, and survey methodologists, to gain a more complete picture of interaction in the standardized survey interview than was previously available.

This book is the first to focus solely on the interactional substrate or...

This is the first study of its kind to investigate in detail the interaction between interviewers and respondents in standardized social survey interviews. Applying the techniques of conversation analysis, Hanneke Houtkoop-Steenstra reveals how certain rules of normal conversation fail to apply in form-based interviews, and offers original empirical evidence to show what really happens. Highly accessible, her book sets out the tools of conversation analysis, and points to ways of improving survey compilation and the validity of data. It offers great insight to anyone studying survey...