The Effectiveness of the Item Count Technique in Eliciting Valid Answers to Sensitive Questions. An Evaluation in the Context of Self-Reported Delinquency

Surveys often contain sensitive questions, i. e., questions about private, illegal, or socially undesirable behavior. When asked directly in standard survey formats, respondents tend to underreport these behaviors, yielding biased results. One method that promises more valid estimates than direct questioning (DQ) is the item count technique (ICT). In this paper, the methodological pros and cons of ICT, as compared to DQ, are weighed up empirically with regard to questions eliciting self-reported delinquency. We present findings from a face-to-face survey of 552 respondents who had all been previously convicted under criminal law prior to the survey. The results show, first, that subjective measures of survey quality such as trust in anonymity or willingness to respond are not affected positively by ICT with the exception that interviewers feel less uncomfortable asking sensitive questions in ICT format than in DQ format. Second, all prevalence estimates of self-reported delinquent behaviors are significantly higher in ICT than in DQ format. Third, a regression model on determinants of response behavior indicates that the effect of ICT on response validity varies by gender. Overall, our results are in support of ICT. This technique is a promising alternative to other specialized questioning techniques such as the much more complicated randomized response technique (RRT).