The Respondents Are All Above Average: Compliment Sequences in a Survey Interview

Abstract

This article is an investigation of compliments that follow respondents' performances on cognitive tasks in the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study's 2004 wave of survey interviews. During training, interviewers learn that they are to give positive feedback to respondents but are not told exactly how they are to do this or how they are to handle the contingencies of respondents' varying performances. Our study shows that interviewers engage in the social action of complimenting respondents and that they use various devices including second sayings or restatements of compliments, assessments of task difficulty, and comparisons with other “people” to account for those compliments. Laughter plays a role in reducing possible status differences that derive from one party (the younger interviewer) being in a position to evaluate another party (the older respondent). Overall, this study contributes to the understanding of what Maynard and Schaeffer (2000, 2002) have called analytic alternation: ways that interviewers use their tacit knowledge in actual practice to fulfill procedures and protocols of the standardized interview. This study also provides a basis for an interaction coding study that will investigate how compliments in the posttask sequence affect other performances and measures within the interview. In this study, we also expand on Pomerantz's (1978) Pomerantz, A. 1978. “Compliment responses: Notes on the co-operation of multiple constraints.”. In Studies in the organization of conversational interaction, Edited by: Schenkein, J. 79–112. New York: Academic.. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] analysis of compliment sequences, demonstrating ways in which the institutional setting of the survey interview and the asymmetry of knowledge it contains exert further constraints on the production and receipt of compliments.