Who should interview older people? The effect of interviewer and interviewee characteristics in surveys of older people and aging topics

Abstract

Who Should Interview Older People? The Effect of Interviewer and Interviewee Characteristics in Surveys of Older People and Aging Topics. Objectives: Aging of the population has increased the need to gain a better understanding of older people’s experiences, especially by collecting their views on various issues and quantitative surveys are frequently used methods. Methods: Five hypotheses are presented on assumption that the characteristics of the respondent and the characteristics of the interviewer (age and gender) significantly affect the interviewer's perceived difficulty in conducting the interview with respondents in higher age on aging related topics. Pooled data from seven quantitative surveys are used to test these hypotheses with multi-level linear regression. Results: Results show that age of interviewers increases the perceived difficulty only slightly if we control for the influence of the gender of the interviewer and the respondent's age and education. Also, more positively aging respondents make the interviews about aging topic easier for interviewers. These influences vary in each of the survey projects and topic. Discussion: Age-and gender-sensitive training and supervision when age/gender sensitive topics are to be surveyed is, according to our results here, strongly advisable.