A simple randomized response technique in comnlex survevsin complex surveys

摘要

Warner (1965) proposed the randomized response (RR) device as a tool for eliminating evasive answer bias while collecting information on sensitive issues. Following Warner several other RR procedures have also emerged in the RR literature. Eichhorn and Hayre (1983) pioneered the scrambled RR (SRR) technique for situations where the reply to a sensitive question results in a quantitative variable instead of being a dichotomous one. The RR devices currently available in the RR literature depends on the nature of the response variable, i.e., whether it is a qualitative response or a quantitative one. Thus these devices can not be applied in both the cases, that is for qualitative as well as quantitative response variables. In this paper, we propose a response independent RR device that can be used when the reply to a sensitive question is either dichotomous or quantitative in nature. A numerical study for efficiency comparison under alternative sampling designs is also presented.