An alternative to unrelated randomized response te

Authors: ShuHui Hsieh ShenMing Lee ChinShang Li SuHao Tu

Publish Date: 2016/01/25

Volume: 25, Issue: 4, Pages: 601-621

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Abstract

The randomized response technique RRT is an important tool that is commonly used to protect a respondent’s privacy and avoid biased answers in surveys on sensitive issues In this work we consider the joint use of the unrelatedquestion RRT of Greenberg et al J Am Stat Assoc 64520–539 1969 and the relatedquestion RRT of Warner J Am Stat Assoc 6063–69 1965 dealing with the issue of an innocuous question from the unrelatedquestion RRT Unlike the existing unrelatedquestion RRT of Greenberg et al 1969 the approach can provide more information on the innocuous question by using the relatedquestion RRT of Warner 1965 to effectively improve the efficiency of the maximum likelihood estimator of Scheers and Dayton J Am Stat Assoc 83969–974 1988 We can then estimate the prevalence of the sensitive characteristic by using logistic regression In this new design we propose the transformation method and provide largesample properties From the case of two survey studies an extramarital relationship study and a cable TV study we develop the joint conditional likelihood method As part of this research we conduct a simulation study of the relative efficiencies of the proposed methods Furthermore we use the two survey studies to compare the analysis results under different scenariosThe authors are grateful to an Associate Editor and a referee for their helpful comments that improved the presentation The research of SH Hsieh and SM Lee was supported by the National Science Council NSC of Taiwan ROC 1002118M001001MY2 and 1012118M035004MY2 respectively The project described was also supported by NSC Taiwan ROC through grant 1002420H001017MY2 SH Hsieh and SM Lee and by the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences NCATS National Institutes of Health NIH through Grant UL1 TR000002 and MIND Institute Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center U54 Hd079125 CS Li The authors would like to thank research fellows YingHwa Chang for adding the RRT questionnaire design by the research project “Taiwan Social Change Survey Year 6 of cycle 3” which was sponsored by the NSC The Survey Research Data Archive Academia Sinica is responsible for the data distribution The authors appreciate the assistance of the aforementioned institutes and individuals in providing all relevant data

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