A Shiny Application for Conducting Electronic Surveys Using Randomized Response Techniques

TL;DR

This paper presents a Shiny app that facilitates electronic surveys using Randomized Response Techniques, making it easier to collect sensitive data while addressing usability and implementation challenges.

Contribution

It introduces an innovative Shiny application that implements RRTs electronically, enabling wider adoption in polling and survey research.

Findings

Implemented Warner and Simmons RRTs in an electronic survey platform

Provides code and detailed explanation for survey practitioners

Lays groundwork for extending RRTs to electronic survey tools

Abstract

Randomized response techniques (RRT) are useful for collecting information on sensitive or confidential attributes in sample surveys. However, such RRTs are rarely used except for pure academic research, as they are deemed to be confusing for respondents and difficult to be administered. Switching to an electronic medium is a solution for this. Standard electronic survey mediums lack the option of effectively incorporating a randomization device into it. This paper introduces a Shiny application that implements two popular Randomized Response Techniques, namely, Warner (1965) and Simmons (1967), to collect information on sensitive issues via electronic surveys, and save them using local or remote storage. Code and its detailed explanation has been provided for suitable use by survey statisticians and practitioners. The method suggested here can be extended to implement any Randomized Response Technique. Thus, this paper lays the groundwork of implementing RRTs as electronic surveys for widespread use by the polling industry.