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Free download from www.hsrcpress.ac.zaand that this applies equally to an interview, a laboratory, or a field situation.Hyman attempted to systematize the influence of researcher orientations asfollows: He identified three types of orientation effects in interview situations:bias-producing cognitive factors within the interviewer, attitude structureexpectations, and role expectations. In the first category Hyman included thosecognitive factors which could result in specific expectations as far asrespondents’ answers are concerned, and which are unique to the interviewersuch as his or her particular beliefs and perceptions. Hyman, as an example,quotes the following passage in which a female interviewer discusses herattitudes towards respondents:When asked whether she could make guesses about the attitudes of therespondents, she replied; ‘I often get fooled. On Russian questions Iperhaps unconsciously make guesses. But if I do that I’m likely to writedown what I think. Therefore I try not to.’ But when the issue is pursued byasking her whether there are any characteristic types of respondents, shesays: ‘Once they start talking, I can predict what they’ll say ...’ (1954: 58)As Hyman quite correctly states, expectations of this nature may constitute animportant source of bias if the interviewer is led by them in his or her furtherprobing, classification of responses, and so on. Under the second category thatHyman refers to as attitude-structure expectations, he draws attention to thefact that some interviewers tend to believe that the attitudes of respondents arelikely to display a uniform structure. This leads to a situation where theinterviewer expects the respondent to answer later questions in a schedule inaccordance with responses provided earlier on. This situation is clearlyreflected in a statement like: Once they start talking, I can predict what they’llsay (Hyman, 1954: 59).The third category of orientation effects, perhaps more appropriately referredto as expectancy effects, (or role expectations as Hyman calls them), is definedin the following manner: We might conceive of role expectations to denote thetendencies of interviewers to believe that certain attitudes or behaviors occurin individuals of given group memberships, and therefore to expect answers ofa certain sort from particular persons (1954: 61). Role expectations, whichfrequently lead to the development of rigid stereotypes, are particularlyprevalent in those cases where men have certain views of female roles, whereWhites have particular conceptions about Blacks, youth about the aged, or theinverse, and so on. As an illustration of this phenomenon, Hyman refers to theremark by a male interviewer who said: I just don’t think the average womanhas as much social consciousness as the average man (1954: 61)Rosenthal and his co-workers systematically studied similar expectancy effectsin experimental studies. One of the best-known studies on experimenter ex-85