Abstract
When private or stigmatizing characteristics are included in sample surveys, direct questions result in low cooperation of the respondents. To increase cooperation, indirect questioning procedures have been established in the literature. Nonrandomized response methods are one group of such procedures and have attracted much attention in recent years. In this article, we consider four popular nonrandomized response schemes and present a possibility to improve the estimation precision of these schemes. The basic idea is to require multiple indirect answers from each respondent. We develop a Fisher scoring algorithm for the maximum likelihood estimation in the presented new schemes and show the better efficiency of the new schemes compared with the original designs.
Highlights
Surveys are important tools in many disciplines of science, for instance, social science and economics
When private or stigmatizing characteristics are included in sample surveys, direct questions result in low cooperation of the respondents
We develop a Fisher scoring algorithm for the maximum likelihood estimation in the presented new schemes and show the better efficiency of the new schemes compared with the original designs
Summary
Surveys are important tools in many disciplines of science, for instance, social science and economics. Consider the following process with the sensitive attribute undeclared work and throwing a die as random experiment: If the die shows 1 or 2, the interviewee answers the question “Have you conducted work in the last year without declaring this to the relevant public authorities?”. The random experiment in RR methods is a bit cumbersome and causes doubts on the suitability of RR methods for online surveys This motivated diverse authors to introduce nonrandomized response (NRR) methods, for example, Yu, Tian, and Tang (2008), Tan, Tian, and Tang (2009), Tang, Tian, Tang, and Liu (2009) or Groenitz (2014). Depending on the sensitive characteristic and the result of the first repetition of the experiment, the first indirect answer must be given. The basic idea for repeated NRR techniques is to involve multiple different auxiliary characteristics in the procedure.
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