Eliciting Information from Sensitive Survey Questions

44 Pages Posted: 21 Oct 2020

See all articles by Yonghong An

Yonghong An

Department of Economics, Texas A&M University

Pengfei Liu

University of Rhode Island - Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics

Date Written: September 2, 2020

Abstract

This paper considers how to elicit information from sensitive survey questions. First we thoroughly evaluate list experiments (LE), a leading method in the experimental literature on sensitive questions. Our empirical results demonstrate that the assumptions required to identify sensitive information in LE are violated for the majority of surveys. Next we propose a novel survey method, called Multiple Response Technique (MRT), for eliciting information from sensitive questions. We require all of the respondents to answer three questions related to the sensitive information. This technique recovers sensitive information at a disaggregated level while still allowing arbitrary misreporting in survey responses. An application of the MRT provides novel empirical evidence on sexual orientation and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT)-related sentiment.

Keywords: list experiments, measurement error, sensitive information, sensitive questions, survey data, LGBT

JEL Classification: D8, C1

Suggested Citation

An, Yonghong and Liu, Pengfei, Eliciting Information from Sensitive Survey Questions (September 2, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3685581 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3685581

Yonghong An (Contact Author)

Department of Economics, Texas A&M University ( email )

Department of Economics
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX 77843-4228
United States

HOME PAGE: http://yonghongan.org

Pengfei Liu

University of Rhode Island - Department of Environmental and Natural Resource Economics ( email )

Kingston, RI 02881
United States

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