| Our study investigated telephone interviewers' anxiety and its relationship with shift productivity and their perceived self-efficacies in various domains of occupational behaviors and social interactional tasks. Participants were 30 telephone interviewers currently working in the Center for Survey Research (CSR) at the Ohio State University. A well-established measure of anxiety (STAI) was administered three times (pre-shift, mid-shift, end-shift) during a four-hour regular telephone interview shift. Interviewers also filled out the Skill Confidence Inventory (SCI) and the Perceived Social Self-Efficacy (PSSE) that measures their confidence in performing various occupational activities and social interactional tasks. Results indicated a significant relationship between interviewer anxiety and productivity indices and a significant relationship between anxiety and perceived social self-efficacy and self-efficacy in performing enterprising types of activities. Scatter plot analyses suggest an interaction effect between number of refusals and self-efficacy on interviewer anxiety. These results are discussed in terms of the limitation of the present study (i.e. small sample size) and its implication for future research. Implications for supervision and interviewer training are also discussed. |