Assessing the measurement error properties of interviewer observations of neighbourhood characteristics.

Interviewer observations made during the process of data collection are currently used to inform responsive design decisions, to expand the set of covariates for nonresponse adjustments, to explain participation in surveys, and to assess nonresponse bias. However, little effort has been made to assess the quality of such interviewer observations. Using data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighbourhood Survey (L.A.FANS), this paper examines measurement error properties of interviewer observations of neighbourhood characteristics. Block level and interviewer covariates are used in multilevel models to explain interviewer variation in the observations of neighbourhood features.