An Empirical Validation Study of Popular Survey Methodologies for Sensitive Questions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6232402 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Bryn Rosenfeld (0000-0003-1399-2777, Princeton University), Katsushi Imai (0000-0002-2748-1022, Princeton University), Kosuke Imai, Jacob N Shapiro (0000-0002-7484-229X, Princeton University) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 60 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 783-802 |
| Publication date | 2016-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ajps.12205 |
| OpenAlex | W1935171624 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 116 |
| References cited | 44 |
When studying sensitive issues, including corruption, prejudice, and sexual behavior, researchers have increasingly relied upon indirect questioning techniques to mitigate such known problems of direct survey questions as underreporting and nonresponse. However, there have been surprisingly few empirical validation studies of these indirect techniques because the information required to verify the resulting estimates is often difficult to access. This article reports findings from the first comprehensive validation study of indirect methods. We estimate whether people voted for an anti‐abortion referendum held during the 2011 Mississippi General Election using direct questioning and three popular indirect methods: list experiment, endorsement experiment, and randomized response. We then validate these estimates against the official election outcome. While direct questioning leads to significant underestimation of sensitive votes against the referendum, indirect survey techniques yield estimates much closer to the actual vote count, with endorsement experiment and randomized response yielding the least bias
Econometrics · Economics · Non-response bias · Political science · Politics · Public economics · Referendum · Response bias · Social desirability · Social desirability bias · Statistics · Survey data collection · Survey methodology · Law · Mathematics · Psychology · Social Psychology · Statistical Methods and Bayesian Inference · Survey Methodology and Nonresponse · Survey Sampling and Estimation Techniques
Countering Violent Extremism in Indonesia
Defection Denied
Measuring Self-Censorship in Chinese Surveys Through List Experiments – Distributive Justice and Pro-Regime Conformity Bias
Narcotrafficking Across a Nation
Survey Mode Effects in a Developing Country
Alcohol consumption in Iran
The Potential of Survey Experiments in Family Sociology
Child online safety education
AIsplaining
Migrants and Expats
Popular Dictatorships
Expressive Constraint and Monarchical Legitimacy in Eswatini
Do Americans Really Support Black Athletes Who Kneel During the National Anthem? Estimating the True Prevalence and Strength of Sensitive Racial Attitudes in the Context of Sport
Solid support or secret dissent? A list experiment on preference falsification during the Russian war against Ukraine
Assessing the Validity of Prevalence Estimates in Double List Experiments
Self-Administered Field Surveys on Sensitive Topics
Media, information, and political participation
Is carbon removal delaying emission reductions
The information wars
Sensitive Research
Alternative Estimates of Lifetime Prevalence Of Abortion from Indirect Survey Questioning Methods
Knowing Is Disturbing
Performative Progressiveness
The Pitfalls of List Experiments in Conflict Zones
The impact of indirect questioning
Bystanders and response bias in face-to-face surveys in Africa
Two implications of survey research mode during war
Researching Russia with Digital Trace Data
Popular Legal Attitudes and the Political Order
Fear-of-the-State Bias” in Survey Data
Estimating Sensitive Behavior
Behind the veil
Organizational and partisan brokerage of social benefits
Combatant rank and socialization to norms of restraint
Allies on the streets but illiberal in the sheets? Gender and the public vs. private inclusion of sexual minorities
Sex, lies, and measurement
What one thinks, what one says and what one does
Can youth empowerment programs reduce violence against girls during the Covid-19 pandemic
Understanding vote buying in Nepali elections
Differentially private survey research
What Works for Measuring Intimate Partner Violence
Estimating the sex buying behavior of adult males in the United States
Nordmenns holdninger til telefonavlytting
The List Experiment for Measuring Abortion
Can a List Experiment Improve Validity of Abortion Measurement
Enforcement Process Tracing
The Impact of Modern-System Training on Battlefield Participation by Kurdish Soldiers
The shadow of social desirability bias
Improving studies of sensitive topics using prior evidence
Using the Predicted Responses from List Experiments as Explanatory Variables in Regression Models
Uncovering a Blind Spot in Sensitive Question Research
Answering Questions About Race
Fear of punishment as a driver of survey misreporting and item non-response in Russia and its neighbors
The grapevine effect in sensitive data collection
When to Protect? Using the Crosswise Model to Integrate Protected and Direct Responses in Surveys of Sensitive Behavior
Measuring social norms
Attitudes and behaviors in a fragile state. A list experiment in Mali
Gender Stereotyping Questions Accurately Measure Beliefs About the Traits and Issue Strengths of Women and Men in Politics
Mass Dissimulation in the Syrian Civil War
Sensitive Questions, Spillover Effects, and Asking about Citizenship on the US Census
The Social Costs of Public Political Participation
Does Counterinsurgent Success Match Social Support? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Colombia
Experimenting with List Experiments
Ready for a Woman President
Sensitive Questions in Surveys
Privacy, Sensitive Questions, and Informed Consent
Measuring Political Attitudes with Word Association
(Mis)Measuring Sensitive Attitudes with the List Experiment
Reducing Turnout Misreporting in Online Surveys
Explaining Putin’s impunity
Does everyday corruption affect how Russians view their political leadership
Survey research in Russia
Group Norms, Social Pressure, and Ethnic Voting
Placebo statements in list experiments
How social desirability bias impacts the expression of emotions
Relative Poverty, Perceived Violence, and Support for Militant Politics
Sectarianism and Social Conformity
Dangerous Disconnect
Understanding the Sensitivity of Party Identification Questions in Polarized African Contexts
Counterterrorism Policies and Attitudes Towards Out-Groups
List Experiments with Measurement Error
Paying Attention to Inattentive Survey Respondents
A Bias-Corrected Estimator for the Crosswise Model with Inattentive Respondents
The Misreporting Trade-Off Between List Experiments and Direct Questions in Practice
Relaxing the No Liars Assumption in List Experiment Analyses
List Experiment Design, Non-Strategic Respondent Error, and Item Count Technique Estimators
How and Why Armed Groups Participate in Elections
Decentralization and Corruption in Public Service Delivery
Following Orders or Following the Oath? Assessing Democratic Norm Endorsement Among Service Academy Cadets
Voters Get What They Want (When They Pay Attention)
Gender-of-Interviewer Effects on Support for Women’s Rights and Democracy in Africa
Varieties of connections, varieties of corruption
Technocrat or partisan cabinet ministers
Campaign Effects and the Elusive Swing Voter in Modern Machine Politics
Opting Out of the Social Contract
State Dependency and the Limits of Middle Class Support for Democracy
Partisan Bias in Surveys
Understanding Intimate Partner Violence
The Empiricists' Insurgency
Unprincipled Principals
Communication and Persuasion
A weakly informative default prior distribution for logistic and other regression models
Multivariate Regression Analysis for the Item Count Technique
Randomized Response
On measuring tax evasion
Meta-Analysis of Randomized Response Research
A Comparison of Randomized Response, Computer-Assisted Self-Interview, and Face-to-Face Direct Questioning
Sensitive Questions in Online Surveys
Estimating the prevalence of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Germany
A randomized‐response investigation of the education effect in attitudes towards foreigners
Sexual risk behaviors and alcohol
Discrepancies Between Police and Self-Report Data for Dutch Racial Minorities
Using the Predicted Responses from List Experiments as Explanatory Variables in Regression Models
Measuring Voter Turnout By Using The Randomized Response Technique
Understanding Off-the-Books Politics
The Validity of Randomized Response for Sensitive Measurements
"Racial Attitudes and the "New South
Social desirability bias in voter turnout reports
What Can We Learn with Statistical Truth Serum
A Study of the Properties of the Item Count Technique
Relative Poverty, Perceived Violence, and Support for Militant Politics
Sensitive Questions, Truthful Answers? Modeling the List Experiment with Listit
Statistical Analysis of List Experiments
Statistical Analysis of Endorsement Experiments
Comparing and Combining List and Endorsement Experiments
Vote Buying and Social Desirability Bias
Poverty and Support for Militant Politics
Heuristic versus systematic information processing and the use of source versus message cues in persuasion
Exploring the limits of self-reports and reasoned action
Sensitive questions in surveys
Explaining Support for Combatants during Wartime
Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness
Asking Sensitive Questions
Measuring Induced Abortion in Mexico
| Unique citing works | 116 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 10,55 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2026 (12) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 116 |