This article investigates how different strategies used by interviewers when recording interviewer observations relate to observation accuracy. Before conducting interviews in a refreshment sample of the general population for the German PASS panel study, interviewers were asked to observe one key target variable of the study — whether a household is at risk of poverty or not — for all sampled households. In addition, interviewers recorded what strategies they had used to make their observations. For responding households, we assessed the accuracy of the observation by comparing it to an actual survey measure of poverty risk. Separate multilevel regression models …

Response rates to household surveys have been declining in the past several decades and survey researchers and practitioners have been working on ways to change the survey-taking climate to combat the declining response rates. As part of the 2010 Decennial Census, the U.S. Census Bureau waged the 2010 Integrated Communications Campaign (2010 ICC), a multi-faceted effort to improve public awareness of, attitudes towards, and knowledge about the Census in order to increase Census participation. This type of communications program is a unique case of an attempt to alter the external survey-taking climate and thus potentially affect survey participation. This paper …