  Background: Nuclear recoil from scattering with weakly interacting massive
particles (WIMPs) is a signature searched for in direct detection of dark
matter. The underlying WIMP-nucleon interactions could be spin and/or orbital
angular momentum (in)dependent. Evaluation of nuclear recoil rates through
these interactions requires accounting for nuclear structure, e.g., through
shell model calculations.
  Purpose: To evaluate nuclear response functions induced by these interactions
for $^{19}$F, $^{23}$Na, $^{28, 29, 30}$Si, $^{40}$Ar, $^{70,72,73,74,76}$Ge,
$^{127}$I, and $^{128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, 136}$Xe nuclei that are
relevant to current direct detection experiments, and to estimate their
sensitivity to shell model interactions.
  Methods: Shell model calculations are performed with the NuShellX solver.
Nuclear response functions from non-relativistic effective field theory (NREFT)
are evaluated and integrated over transferred momentum for quantitative
comparisons.
  Results: Although the standard spin independent response is barely sensitive
to the structure of the nuclei, large variations with the shell model
interaction are often observed for the other channels.
  Conclusions: Significant uncertainties may arise from the nuclear components
of WIMP-nucleus scattering amplitudes due to nuclear structure theory and
modelling. These uncertainties should be accounted for in analyses of direct
detection experiments.
