On the comprehensibility and perceived privacy protection of indirect questioning techniques

Hoffmann, Adrian; Puiseau, Berenike Waubert de; Schmidt, Alexander F.; Musch, Jochen

doi:10.3758/s13428-016-0804-3

Cited by 38 publications

(78 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…For those who do not offend or have not been detected offending, researchers should focus on minimizing the potential risk of open self-reports, which may also include negotiating a guarantee of nonprosecution from law enforcement authorities despite incriminatory information that may be obtained during the survey. Also, authors of future surveys might consider including questions that are not legally relevant, but could be used as proxies for actual offending (e.g., "I would watch child pornography, if I knew that I would not be prosecuted") and estimating the degree of honest responding by comparing reported offense rates with offense rates obtained by using randomized response techniques (Hoffmann, Schmidt, Waubert de Puiseau, & Musch, 2014;Warner, 1965).…”

Section: Limitations and Outlookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stigma-Related Stress and Its Correlates Among Men with Pedophilic Sexual Interests

et al. 2015

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Despite decades of research on the adverse consequences of stereotyping and discrimination for many stigmatized groups, little is known about how people with pedophilia perceive and react to stigma. In this article, we present a framework that outlines how stigma-related stress might negatively affect emotional and social areas of functioning, cognitive distortions, and the motivation to pursue therapy, all of which may contribute to an increased risk of sexual offending. We tested our hypotheses in an online survey among self-identified Germanspeaking people with pedophilia (N = 104) using a wide range of validated indicators of social and emotional functioning (Brief Symptom Inventory-53, UCLA Loneliness Scale, Emotion Subscale of the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations, Fear of Negative Evaluation-5, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale). Specific risk factors such as self-efficacy, cognitive distortions and the motivation to seek treatment were also assessed. In line with our hypotheses, fear of discovery generally predicted reduced social and emotional functioning.Contrary to our predictions, perceived social distance and fear of discovery were not linked to self-efficacy, cognitive distortions, or treatment motivation. Results were controlled for the effects of confounding variables (e.g, age, educational level, social desirability, relationship status). We critically evaluate the empirical contribution of this study to research on stigma and child sex offenses, including a discussion of the results in light of the potential indirect effects that public stigma may have on the overall risk for sexual offenses.

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Section: Limitations and Outlookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stigma-Related Stress and Its Correlates Among Men with Pedophilic Sexual Interests

et al. 2015

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“…Hoffmann et al. , ). Therefore, when conducting sensitive research, a part of respondents may not feel threatened by the topic under investigation as they do not consider it to be sensitive at all and, consequently, have no problem participating in the survey and openly divulging their status without the need for any kind of indirect questioning device, such as NS.…”

Section: The Optional Negative Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hoffmann et al. , ). Hence, they may become suspicious and wonder if there is some mathematical trick that will enable researcher to find out their true status.…”

Section: The Optional Negative Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite this, the confidentiality of certain issues is not an objective concept and largely depends on personal beliefs and attitudes as well as on the personal perception of the sensitivity level that a question arouses in the respondent (e.g. Hoffmann et al, 2017). Therefore, when conducting sensitive research, a part of respondents may not feel threatened by the topic under investigation as they do not consider it to be sensitive at all and, consequently, have no problem participating in the survey and openly divulging their status without the need for any kind of indirect questioning device, such as NS.…”

Section: The Optional Negative Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is because respondents might be not fully aware of how the indirect questioning method increases privacy protection (e.g. Hoffmann et al, 2017). Hence, they may become suspicious and wonder if there is some mathematical trick that will enable researcher to find out their true status.…”

Section: The Optional Negative Surveymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mixture of Truthful–Untruthful Responses in Public Surveys

Christofides

Perri

2019

Int Statistical Rev

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Summary When sensitive issues are surveyed, collecting truthful data and obtaining reliable estimates of population parameters is a persistent problem in many fields of applied research mostly in sociological, economic, demographic, ecological and medical studies. In this context, and moving from the so‐called negative survey, we consider the problem of estimating the proportion of population units belonging to the categories of a sensitive variable when collected data are affected by measurement errors produced by untruthful responses. An extension of the negative survey approach is proposed herein in order to allow respondents to release a true response. The proposal rests on modelling the released data with a mixture of truthful and untruthful responses that allows researchers to obtain an estimate of the proportions as well as the probability of receiving the true response by implementing the EM‐algorithm. We describe the estimation procedure and carry out a simulation study to assess the performance of the EM estimates vis‐à‐vis certain benchmark values and the estimates obtained under the traditional data‐collection approach based on direct questioning that ignores the presence of misreporting due to untruthful responding. Simulation findings provide evidence on the accuracy of the estimates and permit us to appreciate the improvements that our approach can produce in public surveys, particularly in election opinion polls, when the hidden vote problem is present.

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Assessing the effectiveness of indirect questioning techniques by detecting liars

2022

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In many fields of applied research, mostly in sociological, economic, demographic and medical studies, misreporting due to untruthful responding represents a nonsampling error that frequently occurs especially when survey participants are presented with direct questions about sensitive, highly personal or embarrassing issues. Untruthful responses are likely to affect the overall quality of the collected data and flaw subsequent analyses, including the estimation of salient characteristics of the population under study such as the prevalence of people possessing a sensitive attribute. The problem may be mitigated by adopting indirect questioning techniques which guarantee privacy protection and enhance respondent cooperation. In this paper, making use of direct and indirect questions, we propose a procedure to detect the presence of liars in sensitive surveys which allows researchers to evaluate the impact of untruthful responses on the estimation of the prevalence of a sensitive attribute. We first introduce the theoretical framework, then apply the proposal to the Warner randomized response method, the unrelated question model, the item count technique, the crosswise model and the triangular model. To assess the effectiveness of the procedure, a simulation study is carried out. Finally, the presence and the amount of liars is discussed in two real studies concerning racism and workplace mobbing.

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On the comprehensibility and perceived privacy protection of indirect questioning techniques

Cited by 38 publications

References 57 publications

Stigma-Related Stress and Its Correlates Among Men with Pedophilic Sexual Interests

Stigma-Related Stress and Its Correlates Among Men with Pedophilic Sexual Interests

Mixture of Truthful–Untruthful Responses in Public Surveys

Assessing the effectiveness of indirect questioning techniques by detecting liars

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