Survey interviewers are often tasked with assessing the quality
of respondents’ answers after completing a survey interview. These
interviewer observations have been used to proxy for measurement error
in interviewer-administered surveys. How interviewers formulate these
evaluations and how well they proxy for measurement error has received
little empirical attention. According to dual-process theories of impression
formation, individuals form impressions about others based on the
social categories of the observed person (e.g., sex, race) and individual
behaviors observed during an interaction. Although initial impressions
start with heuristic, rule-of-thumb evaluations, systematic processing is
characterized by extensive incorporation of available evidence. In a survey
context, if interviewers default to heuristic information processing
when evaluating respondent engagement, then we expect their evaluations
to be primarily based on respondent characteristics and stereotypes
associated with those characteristics. Under systematic processing, on the other hand, interviewers process and evaluate respondents based on observable respondent behaviors occurring during the question-answering
process. We use the Work and Leisure Today Survey, including survey
data and behavior codes, to examine proxy measures of heuristic
and systematic processing by interviewers as predictors of interviewer
postsurvey evaluations of respondents’ cooperativeness, interest, friendliness,
and talkativeness. Our results indicate that CATI interviewers
base their evaluations on actual behaviors during an interview (i.e., systematic
processing) rather than perceived characteristics of the respondent
or the interviewer (i.e., heuristic processing). These results are
reassuring for the many surveys that collect interviewer observations as
proxies for data quality.