ArticlePopulation health metrics2026
Interviewer gender and loneliness disclosure in survey research: evidence from the European Social Survey and the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe.
Article in Population health metrics, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundLoneliness is an important public health concern, but interviewer effects in face-to-face surveys may affect population-based monitoring efforts. Prior work suggests that people may be more open about sensitive topics to female interviewers than to male interviewers. This study examines whether interviewer gender influences the reporting of loneliness.
methodsData are from 276,073 face-to-face interviews from four rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS) and four waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Country-specific logistic regression models were estimated to assess the association between interviewer gender and reported loneliness, adjusting for respondent characteristics. Interaction effects with respondent gender were also examined. Country-specific average marginal effects were combined using random-effects meta-analyses. Sensitivity analyses used a continuous measure of loneliness (short UCLA scale).
resultsAcross datasets, the effect of interviewer gender on reported loneliness was close to zero and not statistically significant (ESS: θ = -0.001, 95% CI: -0.006 to 0.005; SHARE: θ = -0.017, 95% CI: -0.034 to 0.001; Overall: θ = -0.004, 95% CI: -0.011 to 0.002). No evidence was found for stronger effects among male respondents (ESS: θ = 0.006; 95% CI: -0.006 to 0.019; SHARE: θ = -0.005; 95% CI: -0.027 to 0.018; Overall: θ = 0.002; 95% CI: -0.009 to 0.013). Although some between-country heterogeneity was observed, effect estimates remained centered around zero. Sensitivity analyses using the UCLA loneliness scale yielded comparable results.
conclusionsThese precise estimates suggest that interviewer gender is unlikely to be a source of bias in loneliness monitoring.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.