Being an ONS interviewer for nearly ten years has taught me
a thing or two about respondents and their wily ways. I shall try to impart to
you some of this valuable knowledge, as I’m sure it will come in useful.

If you find that over the course of say three or four visits
to an address that a) exactly the same lights are on day and night, b) the car
is in exactly the same place, c) discernable through the glass of the door is a
nice big pile of letters that does not diminish, or d) all of the above, you
can be pretty sure that the residents are away. In this case, you call on the
nearest neighbour, who is guaranteed to come to the door with a bright smile
and tell you exactly how long they are away for and probably where they’ve gone
and why. Recently I received the interesting information that, “They’re away
until March, they’ve gone to Portugal to sell their house”. People are so
helpful. This tells me a) that they are pretty well off and b) that the coast
is clear for the next month, mwahaha. Er, sorry, I mean it tells me that I
should not bother to call back for the rest of the field period (apart from a
quick glance to see if the car’s moved).

Working at some distance from your home (let’s say twenty
miles), you call at an address several times before you catch the respondent at
home, then, one day, you find them at home and willing to give you an
appointment (usually for the most inconvenient time possible). You hand them a
nice ONS appointment card and wander towards your car with a sappy smile plastered
across your face. You turn up for your appointment at the allotted time (having
fought your way through blizzards and traffic jams and past crawling tractors,
when you should really be at your kid’s parents’ evening) only to find light
on, car in drive, curtains closed, telly glow flashing through the gap and
apparently nobody at home. Your ready smile fades a little under the inch of
snow that has gathered on your eyebrows while you’ve been knocking at the door.
Never mind, they probably haven’t heard you. You go back to your car and try
the phone number that they so kindly supplied, only to find that it’s
unobtainable. Silly you, you must have written it down wrong.  You will call back many times over the next couple
of weeks and one day you may catch them again. There is a good chance, at this
point, that they will tell you that they are not really interested. You will
walk back to your car with sagging shoulders and a lonely tear trickling down
your cheek (or if you’re anything like me, your silent mouthings as you walk
away will turn the air blue).

As we get older, we shall almost certainly find that our
children (if we are lucky enough to be blessed with a brood of the little
angels) will turn into angry and despotic monsters, who, while resenting our
very existence and cursing our continued good health, will also become fiercely
protective of us and will insist on vetting everyone who wishes to have contact
with us. I once called on one of my addresses to find a charming and sprightly
ninety-five year old gentleman willing to do the housing interview there and
then. We had a lovely chat, he answered all my questions perfectly capably and
afterwards showed me some family snaps. He then happily made a surveyor’s
appointment and I left, wishing him all the best. A few weeks later (after the
surveyor had made his visit) I had a phone call from the field office telling
me that they had had an irate call from the gentleman’s daughter, saying that I
should not have interviewed him without asking her first. Well, sadly for her,
she was too late to stop my fiendish plan!

Sometimes you have to take your interviews where you can,
without care for your personal safety or consideration for basic levels of
hygiene. One of my favourite interviews is still the one conducted under difficult
circumstances in a house on Canvey Island. The respondent was helpful and
pleasant on contact, but wished to leave the interview for the time being as
her house was a bit of a mess, as she’d just moved in. I waited until the end
of the field period to call back and she made an appointment for a day or so
later (about two weeks after I first called). When I arrived, the lady (a
single mum with four or five children) invited me in, but said that the only
way we would be able to do the interview was if I sat on the stairs and she
stood in the hall. I could see that she had a point, as every other room was
filled with stuff – furniture mainly, piled from floor to ceiling. The stairs
were only barely accessible, with bits and pieces piled on either side. I
conducted the interview squatting on the stairs, hardly daring to move for fear
of dislodging something, with a delightful two year old sitting on my lap
helping me by pressing the keys on my laptop. The lady had sent the family rottweiler
upstairs after he broke a glass by wagging his tail in the hall, and he came
down to ‘help’ too, at various points during the interview - help mainly
consisting of licking my right ear. At some points the grown up daughter and
her boyfriend leaned over the banister to see what was going on and to
contribute if needed. They were good-naturedly embarrassed when they dropped
cigarette ash on my head. During the course of the interview, I had to ask when
the family had moved in; the lady replied quite casually, “Last June”.  My survey month was November!

Just remember folks, it takes all sorts to make a world, and
we intrepid interviewers thoroughly enjoy meeting a random, representative
sample of most of them.