Familiar Faces, Honest Answers? The Impacts of Enumerator Familiarity and Modality on Survey Responses

Travis Baseler, Lipeng Chen and Thomas Ginn ()
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Lipeng Chen: Analysis Group
Thomas Ginn: Center for Global Development

No 754, Working Papers from Center for Global Development

Abstract: Survey data can be distorted through mistrust, discomfort, or demand effects on the part of respondents. We test whether familiar enumerators—those with whom a respondent has completed a prior survey—influence data quality in a panel survey with small business owners in Uganda. We randomly assign respondents to a familiar or a new enumerator and cross-cut a second randomization to an in-person or phone-based interview modality. Across a broad set of outcome types, we observe few impacts of either survey method on means, distributions, or attrition. However, respondents are significantly more likely to give socially desirable answers to new surveyors compared to familiar ones. The effect of familiarity does not interact significantly with a prior experiment conducted with the same sample, suggesting that familiarity influences estimates of levels but not of treatment impacts. These findings suggest that surveys by familiar enumerators can improve the measurement of sensitive beliefs.

Keywords: survey design; enumerator effects; social desirability bias (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C42 C81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2026-09-01
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