Water treatment in rural Guatemala: factors associated with the use of biosand water filters

Point-of-use water filters are a means to provide clean water vital to the health of people in developing countries. The factors that influence the adoption of this technology include hygiene knowledge, health beliefs related to the use of new technology, and technical issues with using the filter (e.g., water taste and breakage). This study examines how people in Mayan communities in rural Guatemala perceived biosand filters they had received and what factors related to their filter use. Based on the survey and interviewer observations, approximately 53% were regular filter users, 28% were irregular filter users, and 19.4% were non-filter users. The observational data revealed that actual filter use is lower than self-reported use, reflecting complexities in the adoption of technology. One such complexity can be seen in the connection between health beliefs and behavior. The belief that believing drinking filtered water is salubrious does not necessarily coincide with filter use, but education and hygienic practices correlated with regular filter use. Furthermore, regular users typically depend on family members for a daily reminder to use the filter, suggesting that education should foster peer support as well as imparting knowledge.

Do Interviewer Assessments of Respondents’ Performance Accurately Reflect Response Behavior?

A growing body of literature points to the possibilities offered by postsurvey interviewer observations as a source of paradata to obtain insights into data quality. However, their utility in predicting actual behavior of respondents has attracted limited scholarly attention so far. Using data from Round 7 of the European Social Survey, we aim to clarify the relationship between interviewer observations and response styles (straightlining, item nonresponse, use of middle and extreme categories). We contribute to previous research by empirically verifying whether interviewer observations in face-to-face interviews can be effectively used as accurate predictors of data quality. Findings suggest that interviewers’ assessments of response behavior to some extent reflect response styles and can potentially be a valuable tool for the evaluation and improvement of survey data quality, although this seems mainly restricted to the most overt (i.e., easily observable) response styles.

Strategies for Increasing the Accuracy of Interviewer Observations of Respondent Features

Because survey response rates are consistently declining worldwide, survey researchers strive to obtain as much auxiliary information on sampled units as possible. Surveys using in-person interviewing often request that interviewers collect observations on key features of all sampled units, given that interviewers are the eyes and ears of the survey organization. Unfortunately, these observations are prone to error, which decreases the effectiveness of nonresponse adjustments based on the observations. No studies have investigated the strategies being used by interviewers tasked with making these observations, or examined whether certain strategies improve observation accuracy. This study is the first to examine the associations of observational strategies used by survey interviewers with the accuracy of observations collected by those interviewers. A qualitative analysis followed by multilevel models of observation accuracy shows that focusing on relevant correlates of the feature being observed and considering a diversity of cues are associated with increased observation accuracy.

Sources of Variance in the Accuracy of Interviewer Observations

In face-to-face surveys, interviewer observations are a cost-effective source of paradata for nonresponse adjustment of survey estimates and responsive survey designs. Unfortunately, recent studies have suggested that the accuracy of these observations can vary substantially among interviewers, even after controlling for household-, area-, and interviewer-level characteristics, limiting their utility. No study has identified sources of this unexplained variance in observation accuracy. Motivated by theoretical expectations from the observer bias literature, this study analyzed more than 45,000 open-ended justifications provided by interviewers in the U.S. National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) for their observations on two key features of all sampled NSFG households: presence of children and expected probability of household response. The study finds that variability among interviewers in the cues used to record these observations (evident from the open-ended justifications) explains much of the previously unexplained variance in observation accuracy.