Item Count Technique in estimating the proportion of people with a sensitive feature

Abstract

In assessing the prevalence of a sensitive attribute like habitual heroin consumption in a community of people, indirect questioning is a necessity to extract truth on ensuring protection of privacy. The current literature seems to need supplementary specification of a relevant practical and theoretical justification for one possibility by what is called an Item Count Technique. This method can be easily incorporated in large scale sample surveys where the medium of collecting information is a structured questionnaire. This feature will make this technique attractive to social survey researchers. In this article we present an amendment to the currently available technique rendering it well-equipped with a provision to protect privacy and also a sound theoretical foundation. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.