Who is asking and how? Effects of survey mode and enumerator gender on measuring women’s life experience

We explore the causal impact of survey design choices on measurement of outcomes about women’s experiences using standard questions that inform policy and research on women’s and girls’ empowerment. Among ultra-poor women in rural Ethiopia, we experimentally vary the survey mode (phone or in-person) and enumerator gender (male or female) for a survey module eliciting respondents’ beliefs about and experiences with physical safety, emotional well-being, and independence. We find that women report their experiences similarly to a female or male enumerator (for interviews conducted by phone) and they also report experiences similarly in person versus over the phone (for interviews conducted by a male enumerator). For the least empowered respondents, those interviewed by phone are significantly less likely than those interviewed in person to agree that domestic violence perpetrated by husbands against wives is justified under some conditions, suggesting that the privacy of a phone interview gives them an opportunity to state their objection. Our results suggest that phone surveys present a cost-effective means of collecting comparable sensitive data from women without altering respondent reporting, or with improvements possible in some contexts.