Correlates of Differences in Interactional Patterns among Black and White Respondents

Features of the survey measurement process may affect responses from respondents in various racial, ethnic, or cultural groups in different ways. When responses from multiethnic populations are combined, such variability in responding could increase variable error or bias results. The current study examines the survey response process among Black and White respondents answering questions about trust in medical researchers and participation in medical research. Using transcriptions from telephone interviews, we code a rich set of behaviors produced by respondents that past research has shown to be associated with measurement error, including long question-answer sequences, uncodable answers, requests for repetition or clarification, affective responses, and tokens. In analysis, we test for differences between Black and White respondents in the likelihood with which behaviors occur and examine whether the behaviors vary by specific categorizations of the questions, including whether the questions are racially focused. Overall, we find that White respondents produce more behaviors that indicate cognitive processing problems for racially focused questions, which may be interpreted as demonstrating a “cultural” difference in the display of cognitive processing and interaction. Data are provided by the 2013–2014 Voices Heard Survey, a computer-assisted telephone survey designed to measure respondents’ perceptions of barriers and facilitators to participating in medical research.