Research into survey errors and interview bias has advance thinking about larger issues of how people create social meaning and achieve cultural understanding Survey researcher are troubled when The same words have different meanings and implications depending on the social situation (who speaks them, how they are spoken and the social distance between the speaker and listener) Respondent do not always understand the social situation of survey research

It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that the interview setting itself distinct from other settings in which attitudes ae expressed Naive assumption model Improve survey research by reducing the gap between actual experience in conducting surveys and the idea survey expressed as the model’s assumptions

The model assumptions 1. Researcher have clearly conceptualized all variables being measured 2. Questionnaires have no wording, question order, or related effects 3. Respondents are motivated and willing to answer all the questions asked 4. Respondents possess complete information and can accurately recall events 5. Respondents understand each question exactly 6. Respondents give more truthful answers if they don’t know the hypotheses

The model assumptions 8. The interview situation and specific interviewers have no effects on answers 9. The process of the interview has no impact on the respondents’ beliefs or attitudes 10. Respondents’ behaviors match perfectly their verbal responses in an interview 7. Respondents give more truthful answers if they receive no hints or suggestions

Standard interview behavior may actually lower validity, especially for respondents from social groups outside the middle class world of most survey researchers Such attempts to reduce bias cause other problems according to interpretive or critical social science researchers

Social meaning does not reside in the words alone. It resides in the social context and interaction among people, and in cultural frames (sometimes divided by gender, race, region, etc) in which people live. Even so called objective categories in survey research, such as race or ethnicity, can vary greatly in how respondents think subjectively and answer. Human responses in interviews are more complex and vary more by situation than outlined by the naïve assumption model

The issues of social meaning suggest that a survey researcher should at least supplement closed-ended questionnaire with open-ended questions and probes. This takes more time, requires better trained interviers, and produces responses that may be less standardized and more to quantify.