Quantifying the Potential Interviewers’ Effect in the National Family Health Surveys in India

There is little research on quantifying the potential interviewers’ effect in low- and middle- income countries including India. This study examines interviewers’ effect in two large-scale National Family Health Surveys in India in 2005-06 and 2015-16, with a particular focus on whether the interviewers’ effect varies by the sensitivity level of the questions that are asked in the surveys. We conclude that the interviewers’ effect varies by the sensitivity level of the outcome, with a large interviewers’ effect on responses to potentially sensitive questions (such as the woman’s justification of wife beating in specific circumstances), but only a very small or negligible effect on responses to non-sensitive questions (educational attainment, age heaping, and modern contraceptive use) in both the surveys. The results were similar using two alternative analytical approaches (deviance residuals and a cross-classified random intercept logit model). The interviewers’ effect was much larger in the 2015-16 survey, which had a sample size of 699,686 women age 15-49, than it was in the 2005-06 survey, which had a sample size of 124,385 women age 15-49.