Improved Estimation Methods for Unrelated Question Randomized Response Techniques

AbstractRandomized response techniques (RRT) are important tools, commonly used to avoid biased answers in survey on sensitive issues by preserving the respondents' privacy. In this paper, we introduce a data collection method for survey on sensitive issues combining both the unrelated-question randomized response techniques of Greenberg et al. (1969) and the direct question design. The direct questioning method is utilized to obtain responses to a non-sensitive question that is related to the innocuous question from the unrelated-question RRT. These responses serve as additional information that can be used to improve the estimation of the prevalence of the sensitive behavior. Furthermore, we propose two new methods for the estimation of the proportion of respondents possessing the sensitive attribute under a missing data setup. More specifically we develop the weighted estimator and the weighted conditional likelihood estimator. The performances of our estimators are studied numerically. Both proposed e...