ASSURING CONFIDENTIALITY OF RESPONSES IN SOCIAL RESEARCH: A NOTE ON STRATEGIES.

The article discusses the strategies useful in obtaining truthful responses without jeopardizing the respondent or researcher during the interviews. The first strategy is randomized response technique. In applying one variation of the randomized response technique, the researcher presents each respondent with a card on which two queries are printed. Out of these two questions, one question is of principal interest to the researcher and must be answerable in terms of "yes" or "no." The second question must not be related to the first question. The net result is an identification and response to a question that is not definitely known by the researcher. In order to obtain controversial information, the researcher might choose to use a more mechanical or logistical strategy. Using this strategy, a set of data containing old and new information, merged by the respondent can be obtained, the total data being supplied anonymously. Sometimes, if not used intelligently, this technique can be corrupted.