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Is list randomization applicable to a survey with ~100 sensitive questions?

From your link "In basic terms, list randomization aggregates a response to a sensitive question alongside responses to non-sensitive questions, thereby masking the respondent’s specific answer to the sensitive question. By randomizing lists with and without the sensitive question, researchers can identify prevalence or incidence of the sensitive item within the population or differences between groups (for example treatment and control), but not attribute the sensitive response on an individual basis. If respondents believe that their sensitive answer is not disclosed to the interviewer, they may be more likely to report private behaviors, such as experience of violence."



100 questions would be a lot, yes, unless you had very large samples, which isn't unheard of in today's age.

I suspect it would work better to combine the items somehow.

Alternatively, you might be able to somehow use a subset of the 100 as a kind of anchor, to see how distorted a differently designed sample was, and possibly reweight things.

For example, if you were really serious, you might be able to identify, say, 5-10 items with a lot of variance in the population, and ask about them using list randomization, and also maybe directly to determine how people endorse the items differently if asked indirectly versus directly. Depending on what you did with that, you could then use those items as weighting variables for the other 90-95 items in another sample. In the very least you'd be able to compare the samples to see how different the distributions are on the anchor items.




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