Abstract
The starting point of Garbarski, Schaeffer, and Dykema (this volume, pp. 1–38) is the important discussion of how “rapport” between an interviewer and a respondent in a standardized survey interview may benefit or harm (1) the quality of responses and (2) future survey participation. The authors adapt the concept of rapport to the context of standardized interviewing and to actors’ institutional roles by discerning two actor-specific concepts: the interviewer’s responsiveness and the respondent’s engagement. The stated main purpose of the analysis is qualitative: to describe the complexity of the chosen “constituents” of rapport with regard to the rules of standardized interviews, but they also develop a coding scheme drawing on the analysis. Their additional aim is to explore the analytic potential of their research design with regard to future study participation.
The qualitative analysis is conducted using a combination of content and conversation analysis, though not in a strict sense, as the authors state themselves. The concepts of the interviewer’s responsiveness and the interviewee’s engagement seem to be developed top down, with regard to the participants’ institutional roles in a standardized interview. The starting point is how well the examined behaviors support the institutional task at hand—keeping to the rules of standardization rather than the participants’ own orientations to potential problems in reaching intersubjective understanding on the topic discussed (cf. Wilkinson 2014). So the concept of responsiveness is operationalized (1) as fitting the interviewer’s response to the respondent’s talk but also (2) as fitting it in a way that attends to four dimensions: the survey task, rules of standardization, content, and conversational practices.
The solution to operationalize responsiveness as the fit of the responses by the interviewer to the respondent’s preceding turns (usually answers to the interviewer’s question) is insightful. It makes it possible to describe the ways in which the interviewers orient to maintaining intersubjectivity between the respondent and themselves. This could be a well-functioning approach to analyze rapport in a more general sense, considering different ways in which the interviewers’ turns of talk are attentive to the respondents’ preceding utterances. There is thus some consideration of the position of the utterances within sequences. With the addition of the aspect of standardization and survey task, however, the issue gets more complicated. Examining the ways in which interviewers’ turns of talk fit to the rules of standardization and the institutional task seems an effort that is based on somewhat different analytic premises than analyzing the fit to the respondent’s previous utterances. The point of view is no longer the achievement of intersubjectivity in interaction but an adaptation to institutional norms.
In a closer reading of the described dimensions of responsiveness, we can suggest that the analytic logic on which the classification is based can be further developed. In the scheme described, there seem to be acts of responsiveness orienting to the relational and affective aspects of interaction and those that orient to maintaining mutual understanding on what was said. These dimensions would be transparently understandable as “responsiveness” and “rapport.” In addition to this, however, there are dimensions that are deduced drawing on the norms of standardization, not with regard to the actual fit between interviewers’ and respondents’ utterances. Consider dimension 5, for instance. It includes behaviors that facilitate efficient progress through the interview, for example, reading questions exactly as scripted. The presumed connection of this act with the phenomenon of responsiveness or rapport is not straightforward. Rather than rising from observing the fit of the interviewers’ turns of talk to the respondents’ previous turns, reading questions exactly as scripted is an interview technique deduced from the rules of standardization. In this sense, it seems not to connect straightforwardly with “responsiveness” to respondents, although it may alleviate achieving the institutional task. As stated by the authors, the status of “rapport” may be ambivalent with regard to the institutional task at hand. The fit of utterances to rules of standardization seems to derive from somewhat different analytic premises than observable interaction.
I agree with the authors about the possibilities nested in the quantification of qualitative results. And I agree with them when they state that this effort is not without problems. One such question is the choice of the aforementioned aspect of reading questions exactly as scripted to illustrate the analytic potential of the coding scheme. It is plausible that this practice is key to standardization and that it does facilitate progress through the interview. But the idea that properties such as efficient and professional question reading would serve to motivate the respondent to continue taking part in follow-up interviews because these constitute a pleasant scientific experience is not immediately transparent. The observation that the exact reading of questions is associated with increased odds of future participation is interesting, but its analytic potential in connection with rapport will need clarification.
To my mind, the main contribution of the article is the qualitative analysis that is structured by describing a series of situations at which the respondent’s actions occasion possible problems with the rules of standardization. The analysis illuminates the sort of complications that may ensue and gives insights for further study on maintaining a balance between practices of standardization and responsiveness.