On 22 April, 2026, a new article has been published by Ádám Stefkovics in Public Opinion Quarterly. The title of the article is “Gender-of-Interviewer Effects in the Measurement of Gender Attitudes: Lessons from 18 Countries of the European Social Survey”.

Abstract:

Measuring gender-related questions in face-to-face surveys can be challenging due to the potential influence of the interviewer’s gender. First, people may feel more comfortable disclosing sensitive information (e.g., gender-based discrimination) to a female interviewer or an interviewer of the same gender. Second, respondents may alter their responses in light of what they perceive as desirable, for instance, by reporting more feminist views when interviewed by a female interviewer. To test these assumptions, we use the gender module of the eleventh round of the European Social Survey. We analyze patterns from 28,567 respondent-interviewer dyads from 18 countries. We find no evidence of the interviewer’s gender influencing disclosure and limited evidence of gender-of-interviewer (GOI) effects on distributions. These findings are consistent across countries with varying levels of gender equality. Our results indicate that in European societies, GOI effects may not cause significant harm in social surveys.

The article is available here:

Ádám Stefkovics, Gender-of-Interviewer Effects in the Measurement of Gender Attitudes: Lessons from 18 Countries of the European Social Survey, Public Opinion Quarterly, 2026;, nfag022, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfag022