Keeping the Gate

The authors employ a conversation-analytic perspective, using a haphazard sample of recorded phone calls, to analyze the sequential placement of and turn construction manner for recipients' declinations of the request to participate in a telephone survey interview. Recipients regularly respond very early in the opening of the phone call, just after the “reason for the call” is stated. In constructing their declining turns, recipients are either polite (claiming the “bad timing” of the request or that they are “not interested”), or they are impolite, as when they abruptly hang up. Some declinations are without preamble and are minimalist, whereas others are expressive and contain some question about the nature or length of the interview. The distribution of declination types reflect interviewers' and recipients' coordinated social actions in their brief encounter. The authors explore implications for survey design and data quality.