MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W2800544706 · doi:10.1177/0759106318761562

Strangers in the Field

2018· article· en· W2800544706 on OpenAlexaff
Alexander Weinreb, Mariano Sana, Guy Stecklov

Bibliographic record

VenueBulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique · 2018
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicSurvey Methodology and Nonresponse
Canadian institutionsUniversity of British Columbia
FundersNational Institutes of HealthEunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human DevelopmentUniversity of Texas at Austin
KeywordsRespondentInterviewPsychologySituational ethicsInsiderSocial psychologyNorm (philosophy)Applied psychologySociologyPolitical science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Evaluating a long-term methodological norm - the use of interviewers who have no prior social relationship to respondents - we compare response patterns across levels of interviewer-respondent familiarity. We differentiate three distinct levels of interviewer-respondent familiarity, based on whether the interviewer is directly acquainted with the respondent or their family, acquainted with the research setting, or is a complete outsider. We also identify three mechanisms through which variability in interviewer-respondent familiarity can affect survey responses: the effort a respondent is willing to make; their level of trust in the interviewer; and interview-specific situational factors. Using data from a methodological experiment fielded in the Dominican Republic, we then gauge the effects of each of these on a range of behavioral and attitudinal questions. Empirical results suggest that respondents expend marginally more effort in answering questions posed by insider-interviewers, and that they also lie less to insider-interviewers. Differences in responses to "trust" questions also largely favor insider-interviewers. Overall, therefore, local interviewers, including those whom, in blatant violation of the stranger-interviewer norm, have a prior relationship with the respondent, collect superior data on some items. And on almost no item do they collect data that are measurably worse.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.012
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.030
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.988
Threshold uncertainty score0.062

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0120.030
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0030.003
Scholarly communication0.0030.001
Open science0.0010.003
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0080.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.436
GPT teacher head0.507
Teacher spread0.071 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designObservational
DomainMethods
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations16
Published2018
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueBulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie SociologiqueSame topicSurvey Methodology and NonresponseFrench-language works237,207