First Workshop of the Consumer Expenditure Surveys Redesign Paper, Interview Structure Page 1 of 5

Interviewing Structure in the 

Consumer Expenditure Surveys 

1. Background Statement 

Currently the CEQ is a highly structured and standardized CAPI interview. The 

instrument is programmed to administer the questions in a set order, and the questions are 

designed to be read by the interviewer exactly as worded. It is organized into sections by 

expenditure type (e.g., housing, utilities, vehicle expenses, insurance, educational expenses, etc.). 

Generally, the sections are ordered by topic, for example all housing-related sections are grouped 

together. However, the adjacent placement of two unrelated sections (e.g., home furnishings and 

clothing) is sometimes unavoidable. Additionally, within each topic-based section there are a 

series of individual questions about expenditures in the given category. There are a variety of 

question formats, but all involve respondents being asked if they had a given type of expenditure, 

and if so, a set of follow-up questions about each expense. 

This paper looks at the potential impact of standardized, structured, interviewing on the 

CEQ and seeks recommendations on alternative designs and/or research that could be done to 

determine the best way to design the CE Surveys. During the redesign process, the current 

interview and diary structure is not a constraint, nor is an interviewer-administered survey. A 

non-structured interview, or less traditional methods of obtaining expenditure information, could 

be a possibility. 

2. Relevant Work 

There are known advantages and disadvantages of a structured interview. The main 

advantages are that (1) the interview is (for the most part) administered the same way for all 

respondents, minimizing interviewer effects and keeping potential context effects consistent, and 

(2) the systematic design ensures coverage of every topic. A secondary advantage is that using a 

structured instrument is easier to program, manage, and train interviewers to use. 

There are also several potential disadvantages with a structured interview. The first is 

that it seems unlikely the question order aligns with the way information is stored in a 

respondent’s memory, or with the way respondents spend their money. Miller and Downes-Le 

Guin (1989) looked at the medical expenditure section of the CEQ and found that respondents 
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often recalled events rather than expenditures. Therefore, by asking respondents to report their 

expenditures in the order specified by the interview rather than in the order actually recalled, the 

CEQ may hinder the natural recall process. Respondents may not remember as many purchases 

moving through the questions in the specified order, or they may remember a purchase out of 

order and be reluctant to report it so as not to interrupt the interviewer. Although interviewers 

are able to "jump" between sections, audit trail data suggest they don’t often do so (Chan et al. 

2004). That is, the question order defined by the questionnaire designers is the one that almost 

all respondents get, regardless of any input they may provide. Some CEQ interviewers have said 

that instead of jumping to another section, they write the expenditure reported out of order on a 

piece of paper to refer to when they get to the appropriate section. 

Respondents make purchases, store and retrieve memories, and store and access their 

financial records differently; and these individual differences make a ‘one-size fit all’ structured 

interview approach less than ideal. For example, some may find it easiest to recall the 

information by doing a mental walk-through of their home and recalling items or services 

purchased for each room, while others may find it easier to think about specific events and recall 

the associated expenditures. In terms of financial records, some meticulous respondents may be 

able to provide detailed financial records of all their expenditures, while others may only have 

receipts for a select, unsystematic, portion of their purchases—or none at all. Finally, the 

consumer market has changed since the CEQ was designed; there are more ‘box stores’ which 

allow respondents to purchase an enormous variety of items and services at one place. Asking 

respondents to report by the specific items purchased during a trip to such a store might be more 

difficult than grouping the questions by the shopping trip and collecting all the items purchased 

at that time. 

Within a given CEQ section there is also a fixed question order; expenditures must be 

entered in a set way (e.g., by utility type rather than by month), which may impact the 

respondent’s response process. Consider, for example, a respondent who has retrieved a 

checkbook for reference during the interview. Ideally, this should improve data quality and 

make the process easier for the respondent. Instead of allowing respondents to simply go 

through the checkbook register and report their expenses, however, the CEQ instead asks them to 

look for specific line items as the interview progresses, reporting each one only as it is asked 

about. This misalignment of the interview and respondent records may increase respondent 
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burden, and the chance for reporting errors, as the respondent has to work harder to match 

records with the interview rather than allowing the checkbook to ease the task of reporting as it 

potentially could. 

At a question level, the CEQ is also standardized, with interviewers trained to read 

questions exactly as worded. Theoretically this is to reduce interviewer effects and ensure that 

all required questions are asked. However, in using the CEQ to study respondent 

comprehension, Conrad and Schober (1997 and 2000) found that respondents often 

misunderstood survey concepts and that conversational interviewing improved their 

comprehension. There is similar research showing that when interviewers are allowed to provide 

non-scripted feedback and information, respondent comprehension and the quality of the data 

improve. 

Finally, the current structure does not provide a simple or easy mechanism for 

interviewers to quickly add a series of unrelated expenditures. Should a respondent get to the 

end of an interview and remember a large shopping trip, or if another household member joins 

the interview process and wants to report a variety of expenditures, the interviewer must 

manually go to each section and add each expense individually. This probably limits interviewer 

willingness to add such information, reducing the completeness of the collected data. 

3. Key Issues 

There are many tradeoffs that need to be considered when debating the issue of 

standardized interviewing for the CEQ. Conrad and Schober (1997; and 2000) recognize that 

conversational interviewing results in longer interviews. Longer interviews lead to higher field 

costs and potentially increase respondent burden, which may then impact response rates and/or 

data quality. 

To fulfill its mission, the CEQ must collect very detailed information (e.g., the cost, the 

age and gender of the person for whom a sweater was purchased) on a wide variety of 

expenditure categories. Since it is unrealistic to expect interviewers to know all the required 

details for each category, the follow-up questions must be programmed into some sort of data 

collection instrument. Ensuring that all the required information is collected while allowing for a 

flexible interview may be difficult or even impossible give current CAPI programming 

limitations. 
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Finally, to allow interviewers the capacity to modify the interview based on their 

assessment of the respondent or situation requires them to have a strong grasp of the expenditure 

data required as well an understanding of the cognitive issues involved in the respondent’s recall 

process. Developing and maintaining a highly trained and qualified interviewing staff would be 

expensive. 

Balancing these tradeoffs, determining the optimal way to structure a data collection 

process, while collecting the required detailed, monthly, expenditure data, is an issue CEQ needs 

to address in the redesign process. 

4. Discussion Points 

A main goal during the CE redesign process is to find a way to allow interviewers and 

respondents to be flexible when collecting and providing expenditure data, while maintaining 

enough structure to ensure that all the required data are collected. 

1. The Event History Calendar (EHC) is a semi-structured approach to data collection that 

increases recall of past events by using past experiences as memory cues (Belli 2008). Is 

there a way to leverage the techniques used in the EHC to increase flexibility in the CEQ 

while maintaining enough structure to ensure completeness of the collected data? 

2. Are there any current, complex large scale surveys that successfully use a nonstandardized interview structure? 

3. How should CE evaluate the tradeoffs associated with standardized and structured 

interviewing? 

a. Standardized interviews that may lead to more systematic interviews vs. longer, 

more costly, interviews that might yield more accurate data 

b. Structured interviews ensuring the collection of all required data vs. flexible 

interviews tailored to respondents which may miss required data elements (or 

would require complex, expensive instruments). 

c. Structured, standardized interviews that are straightforward to administer vs. 

flexible interviews that require a highly trained interviewing staff. 
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4. Is it realistic to consider tailoring the interview to respondent situations or recall 

strategies? 

5. What should the next steps be to explore and research this issue for a possible change in 

CE design? 

 

5. References 

Belli, B. F., Alwin, D.F., & Stafford, F. P. (2008). Calendar and Diary Methods in Life 

Methods Research. Sage Publications, New York.

Chan, W., Ho, P., Kang, S., Smith, L., & Tan, L. (2004). CE Interview Audit Trails: 

Report on Development of Prototype for Data Storage and Analysis. Internal BLS Report, 

December 2, 2004. 

 Miller, L.A. & Downes-Le Guin, T. (1989) Improving comprehension and recall in the 

Consumer Expenditure Interview Survey: Discrepancies in comprehension and recall as a source 

of nonsampling error. Proceedings of the Joint Statistical Meetings, 1989.

Conrad, F.G. & Schober, M. F. (2000). Clarifying question meaning in a household 

telephone survey. Public Opinion Quarterly, 64, 1-28. 

Schober, M.F., & Conrad, F.G. (1997). Does conversational interviewing reduce survey 

measurement error? Public Opinion Quarterly, 61, 576-602.