A Note on a Simple and Practical Randomized Response Framework for Eliciting Sensitive Dichotomous and Quantitative Information

Many issues of interest to social scientists and policy makers are of a sensitive nature in the sense that they are intrusive, stigmatizing, or incriminating to the respondent. This results in refusals to cooperate or evasive cooperation in studies using self-reports. In a seminal article, Warner (1...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sociological methods & research 2010-11, Vol.39 (2), p.283-296
Main Authors: Peeters, Carel F. W., Lensvelt-Mulders, Gerty J. L. M., Lasthuizen, Karin
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cooperation
History, theory and methodology
Information acquisition
Meaning
Methodology
Policy Making
Quantitative analysis
Random sampling
Sensitive variables
Social science research
Sociology
Statistical methods
Stigma
Variability
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Summary:Many issues of interest to social scientists and policy makers are of a sensitive nature in the sense that they are intrusive, stigmatizing, or incriminating to the respondent. This results in refusals to cooperate or evasive cooperation in studies using self-reports. In a seminal article, Warner (1965) proposed to curb this problem by generating an artificial variability in responses to inoculate the individual meaning of answers to sensitive questions. This procedure was further developed and extended and came to be known as the randomized response (RR) technique. Here, the authors propose a unified treatment for eliciting sensitive binary as well as quantitative information with RR based on a model where the inoculating elements are provided for by the randomization device. The procedure is simple and the authors will argue that its implementation in a computer-assisted setting may have superior practical capabilities.
ISSN:0049-1241
1552-8294
DOI:10.1177/0049124110378099