In
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...
and
social research
Social research is a research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative.
* Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable ...
, unmatched count, or item count, is a technique to improve, through
anonymity, the number of true answers to possibly embarrassing or self-incriminating questions. It is very simple to use but yields only the ''number'' of people bearing the property of interest and leads to a larger
sampling error
In statistics, sampling errors are incurred when the statistical characteristics of a population are estimated from a subset, or sample, of that population. Since the sample does not include all members of the population, statistics of the sample ...
than direct questions. It was introduced by Raghavarao and Federer in 1979.
Method
The participants of the
survey are divided into two groups at
random
In common usage, randomness is the apparent or actual lack of pattern or predictability in events. A random sequence of events, symbols or steps often has no order and does not follow an intelligible pattern or combination. Individual rando ...
. One group, the
control group
In the design of experiments, hypotheses are applied to experimental units in a treatment group.
In comparative experiments, members of a control group receive a standard treatment, a placebo, or no treatment at all. There may be more than one t ...
, is given a few harmless questions, while the other group gets an additional question regarding the property of interest. The respondents are to reveal only the ''number'' of "yes" answers they have given. Since the interviewer does not know how they arrived at that number, it is safe to answer the awkward question truthfully. Due to the unmatched count of items, the number of people who answered "yes" to the awkward question can be mathematically deduced
Example
The control group is asked how many of the following statements apply: {{Original research inline, date=July 2022
*I have changed my place of residence.
*I own a pet.
*I like to go to the theatre.
*I have never been in a traffic accident.
Let the total number of "yes" answers from this group be 410.
The second group ''additionally'' gets a question concerning the point of interest:
*I have cheated on an examination.
Let the total number of "yes" answers from this group be 460.
Evaluation
The number of "yes" answers in the control group is called the
Baseline (science), baseline. It is assumed that the second group would have given the same number, were it not for the critical question. Thus, their additional "yes" answers (50 in the example) are due to the critical question. This is used to estimate the percentage of cheaters in the population. Let the number of participants in each group be 300. As expectation value, 50 of them answered "yes" to the critical question, meaning that approximately 17% of the population have cheated on examinations.
See also
*
Bogus pipeline The bogus pipeline is a fake polygraph used to get participants to truthfully respond to emotional/affective questions in the survey. It is a technique used by social psychologists to reduce false answers when attempting to collect self-report data. ...
*
Randomized response
References
*Elisabeth Coutts, Ben Jann (2009). ''Sensitive Questions in Online Surveys: Experimental Results for the Randomized Response Technique (RRT) and the Unmatched Count Technique (UCT)'', General Online Research Conference in Vienna
*Dan R. Dalton, James C. Wimbush, Catherine M. Daily (1994). ''Using the Unmatched Count Technique (UCT) to estimate base rates for sensitive behavior''. Personnel Psychology 47, pp. 817–829
*Allison M. Ahart, Paul R. Sackett (2004). ''A New Method of Examining Relationships between Individual Difference Measures and Sensitive Behavior Criteria: Evaluating the Unmatched Count Technique''. Organizational Research Methods, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 101–114
External links
Joseph LaBrie, Mitchell Earleywine E. (2000). ''Sexual risk behavior and alcohol: Higher base rates revealed using the unmatched-count technique''. The Journal of Sex Research, 37, 321–326T. Tsuchiya, Y. Hirai, S. Ono (2007). ''A study of the properties of the item count technique''. Public Opinion Quarterly
Data anonymization techniques
Sampling (statistics)
Survey methodology