Interviewer gender and gender attitudes

This research addresses the effects of interviewer gender on responses to a broad array of gender-related survey questions, using data from a probability sample of adults in the United States. We focus on whether gender-of-interviewer effects are evident, whether they vary by respondent gender, and whether they vary across several attitudinal domains relevant to gender inequality. While many items do not show statistically significant gender-of-interviewer effects, we document significant effects across a variety of items. When such effects are evident, they tend to involve both male and female respondents expressing more egalitarian gender-related attitudes or greater criticism of existing gender inequalities to female interviewers. Male respondents offer significantly different responses to male and female interviewers on questions dealing with gender inequality in employment. For female respondents, interviewer-gender effects are evident for items addressing gender-related collective action, policy, and group interests. Using multivariate models that allow us to represent both respondent-level and interviewer-level variables, we find that interviewer-gender effects are statistically significant in most attitudinal domains but that the interaction between interviewer gender and respondent gender does not tend to be statistically significant. We consider the implications of these findings both for understanding the survey process and for understanding gender relations more generally.