Extraneous Effects of Race, Gender, and Race-Gender Homo- and Heterophily Conditions on Data Quality

This study comprehensively investigated the differences in response patterns of interview respondents by race, gender, and race-gender of both respondents and interviewers, to assess the impacts of response inconsistencies on data quality during survey interviews. The study focused only on Blacks and Whites in various interview phily matches. Interviewees (N = 491) responded to fully structured, closed-ended questions through direct interviews on support for affirmative action, and support for the 2009 America’s Affordable Health Choices Act as dependent variables. Findings showed various amounts of response differences to both dependent variables by differences in race, gender, and race-gender of respondents, vis-àvis those of the interviewers’, thereby constituting various amounts of data inconsistencies. The effects of race, gender, and race-gender of both interviewers and respondents constitute potential nonrandom errors that must be controlled in interview survey research, otherwise, research findings and conclusions may diverge from true relationships between variables