Survey bias on the front porch - Are all subjects interviewed equally?

We examine whether survey interviewers an: biased, in their views of certai n classes of respondents, thereby introducing unobserved bias into survey r esults. There has been a great deal of previous research on how racial and gender dynamics affect the responses given by respondents during face-to-fa ce surveys. In this article, we turn this issue around and ask whether huma n interaction affects how the interviewer views the respondents, and if so, how this may systematically bias surveys. If interviewers are biased, this may impede their ability to conduct interviews in a consistent, nonjudgmen tal, and unbiased manner. Using three surveys that required the interviewer to evaluate how informed and intelligent the respondents appeared, we foun d that interviewers were mote likely to evaluate respondents of lower socio economic status as less informed and less intelligent, even after controlli ng for objective levels of political information. There is also evidence th at Blacks may be negatively evaluated.