ABSTRACT
Broadly speaking, a face-to-face interview in the context of survey research can be defined as a face-to-face interaction between two persons in which one person (interviewer) asks questions by means of a questionnaire and the other person (respondent) answers these questions. The essential characteristics of a face-to-face interview are the direct personal contact between interviewer and respondent, the specific division of tasks between them (asking and responding questions) and the use of a questionnaire in which the wording and the order of the questions are fixed. In fact the questionnaire guides and standardizes the interaction between the interviewer and the respondent. The direct contact between interviewer and respondent is an important difference with telephone interviews. The presence of an interviewer not only offers some additional opportunities but also creates risks. The most important opportunity is the fact that an interviewer can give direct support to the task performance of the respondent. Face-to-face interviews are therefore more suitable for longer interviews with more complex tasks. On the other hand, the most important risk of the presence of an interviewer is the influence or effect that the interviewer may have on the respondent’s answers.
