Information for Interviewers

All interviewers were specially trained to conduct the interviews with the random sample of households selected for the HFCS. Together with the survey company, the OeNB’s HFCS experts ran five separate training workshops for interviewers, two in Vienna plus another three workshops in different parts of Austria.

The purpose of the workshops was to make the interviewers, who were all experienced interviewers, familiar with the key characteristics of the HFCS survey to ensure its success. In addition, the interviewers were given supporting documentation to read up on the topic and as reference material for the interviews.

They received:

• A Catalogue of show cards (available in German only) to be used during the interviews, to provide respondents with a list of possible response options for selected questions;
• A glossary that defined the technical terms used in the questionnaire in plain German, both in alphabetical order (available in German only) and mirroring the questionnaire’s structure (available in German only);
• The paper “Eurosystem Household Finance and Consumption Survey 2014: first results for Austria" as an example of how survey information is used for the purpose of analysis.

For detailed information on the interviewers who conducted the first wave of the HFCS in Austria, see "Interviewers – methodological notes".