Measuring Inappropriate Sexual Behavior Among University Students: Using the Randomized Response Technique to Enhance Self-Reporting.

This article analyzes the efficacy of the randomized response technique (RRT) in achieving honest self-reporting about sexual behavior, compared with traditional survey techniques. A complex survey was conducted of 1,246 university students in Spain, who were asked sensitive quantitative questions about their sexual behavior, either via the RRT (n = 754) or by direct questioning (DQ) (n = 492). The RRT estimates of the number of times that the students were unable to restrain their inappropriate sexual behavior were significantly higher than the DQ estimates, among both male and female students. The results obtained suggest that the RRT method elicits higher values of self-stigmatizing reports of sexual experiences by increasing privacy in the data collection process. The RRT is shown to be a useful method for investigating sexual behavior.

Application of randomized response techniques for investigating cannabis use by Spanish university students.

Cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug in developed countries, and has a significant impact on mental and physical health in the general population. Although the evaluation of levels of substance use is difficult, a method such as the randomized response technique (RRT), which includes both a personal component and an assurance of confidentiality, provides a combination which can achieve a considerable degree of accuracy. Various RRT surveys have been conducted to measure the prevalence of drug use, but to date no studies have been made of the effectiveness of this approach in surveys with respect to quantitative variables related to drug use. This paper describes a probabilistic, stratified sample of 1146 university students asking sensitive quantitative questions about cannabis use in Spanish universities, conducted using the RRT. On comparing the results of the direct question (DQ) survey and those of the randomized response (RR) survey, we find that the number of cannabis cigarettes consumed during the past year (DQ = 3, RR = 17 approximately), and the number of days when consumption took place (DQ = 1, RR = 7) are much higher with RRT. The advantages of RRT, reported previously and corroborated in our study, make it a useful method for investigating cannabis use. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.