He Said, She Said: Gender-of-interviewer Effects and the Role of the Interviewers' Gender Attitudes in the Hungarian Ess Round 11

The measurement of gender attitudes in face-to-face surveys can be problematic due to gender of interviewer effects. When dealing with sensitive gender-related questions, respondents may downplay their genuine beliefs to avoid potential negative judgment from an interviewer of a particular gender or they may emphatically align their responses with perceived socially accepted opinions. In this study, we examine direct gender of interviewer effects and the interaction between the respondents’ and the interviewers’ gender. In addition, we extend prior studies by asking whether the interviewers’ own gender attitudes are associated with the respondents’ attitudes. We use the 11th round of the European Social Survey in Hungary, which contained a module on gender attitudes. In a unique setting, interviewers were asked to answer the same survey, resulting in 1,548 interviewer-respondent dyads available for analysis. The results of the multilevel models suggest no direct effects of the gender of the interviewer and weak interaction effects across different types of attitudes. However, the interviewer’s gender attitudes strongly and positively predicted the respondent’s same attitudes in many cases. We recommend that future face-to-face survey research control for some key attitudinal characteristics of the interviewer and focus on objectivity and self-expression during interviewer training.