Randomized response techniques and self-reported delinquency in ISRD3 and ISRD4

• In Event: ISRD Panel 5: Methodological issues in ISRD4

Abstract

Social desirable responding is one of the major validity threats of self-report delinquency studies. Especially when comparing prevalence rates of delinquent behavior between cultures, differential responding to sensitive questions is an issue. In surveys of the International Self-Reported Delinquency (ISRD) studies different techniques to assess (and control for) social desirable responding have been used. The presentation will compare direct and indirect responses to questions of offending behavior using two different variants of randomized response techniques: The crosswise model (ISRD3) and the parallel item technique (ISRD4), thereby evaluating the feasability of these techniques to elicit truthful responses and to estimate the degree of social desirable responding across cultures in large scale studies of self-reported delinquency.

Author

• Dirk Enzmann, University of Hamburg