ESS fieldwork in Slovenia: nine rounds of building a successful interviewer network
ESS fieldwork in Slovenia: nine rounds of building a successful interviewer network

Summary/Abstract: Slovenia has been a member of the European Social Survey (ESS) from the first wave (2002). All nine waves so far were conducted by the same survey organisation (Public opinion research centre at University of Ljubljana). This stability may be a key in explaining the success in building a reliable interviewer network. Since the first few waves we have almost completely changed the interviewers’ management and switched from students to professional interviewers. The difference is clear; mostly reflected in higher response rates and in the quality of obtained data. An ‘ideal’ interviewer in Slovenia is a woman (although we do have some very good male colleagues), middle aged, with family and other working obligations. Students in recent years, unfortunately, proved to be unreliable in terms of seeing interviewing as “easy money”, while the professionals are well aware that their livelihood depends on the quality of their work.

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