The quality of data collection by an interview on the prevalence of elder mistreatment

The aim of the present study was to investigate the quality of the intervie w process that was used to obtain data on the prevalence of elder mistreatm ent in order to improve the quality of this process in future research stud ies. Audiotapes of interviews with 143 victims of elder mistreatment were t ranscribed into verbatim protocols that were subsequently coded and analyze d. The results of the present study show that despite the fact that all int erviewers were carefully selected, intensively trained, and supervised duri ng the interview period, 4.2% of the questions were skipped, and in 4.4% of the interactions no usable answer was obtained. However, in all of these c ases the interviewer did register an answer, the validity of which is quest ionable. Considerable differences were found between interviewers with resp ect to their performance and also between the various questions. Finally, s uggestions are made to improve interviewer behavior.