Bias in Interviewing

Solution Preview

(1) Please help me with describing at least two personal beliefs or biases that could interfere with ones perception of an interviewee, establishing rapport with him or her, and the interview process itself.

Research suggests that bias in interviewing is most often attributed to the mode of interviewing, For example, two modes are investigated that yield biases are the face-to-face interview and the telephone interview. Within each there is the potential for Interviewer bias (or non-response bias), and the social desirability bias. Interview bias refers to the negative perception (s) the interviewer may have toward the interviewee, while social desirability is the effort on the part of the interviewee to respond in a way that appears more desirable to the interviewer. The Interviewer bias (or non-response bias), the interviewee provides the interviewer with the response that he or she thinks the interviewer wants to hear. A Social desirability bias occurs when an individual does not adhere to a social norms, yet reports the social desirable behavior (Adams, Soumerai, Lomas & Ross-Degnan, 1988). Thus, if an interviewer perceives that a person is being non-responsive, because he or she simply does not want to provide an answer to the question, this perception can lead to the interviewer drawing the wrong conclusion about the client, and his or her problem.

Moreover, the non-responsive interviewee may be putting up barriers that will affect change. As an example of the social desirability bias, studies found that telephone interviews might affect the quality of the data acquired. For instance, random-digit telephone surveys were more ...