Sensitive Questions in Cross-National Comparative Surveys

ABSTRACT

English translation © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2017 “Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia.” “Shchepetil’nye voprosy v mezhstranovykh sravnitel’nykh oprosakh,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, 2017, no. 12, pp. 55-64.

Translated by Kenneth Cargill.

Translation reprinted from Russian Education and Society, vol. 61, no. 1. DOI: 10.1080/10609393.2019.1738783.

Anna Vladimirovna Andreenkova, candidate of political sciences, deputy director of the Institute for Comparative Social Research (CESSI), Moscow, Russia; E-mail: [email protected]

The article is devoted to the problem of survey items that ask for sensitive information. This factor has a significant impact on the quality and comparability of data from international surveys. We propose a methodology that can be used to comparatively study the level of sensitivity of questions. It is often used in public opinion polls as well as in marketing and academic studies. We were able to use it to identify similarities and differences in what questions are considered sensitive by the different populations of the nine countries of the former Soviet Union as a whole as well as among particular socio-demographic groups. The study analyzes the reasons why certain questions are considered to be sensitive: the violation of various norms, whether legal or political, social or moral, communication etiquette or beliefs about what constitutes private information. We developed a classification of sensitive questions based on the reasons that were identified. The obtained results allow us to better understand the reasons of why certain questions are considered to be sensitive, to develop an approach to how this concept should be defined, and to identify the differences between sensitive questions and those that are perceived to have other qualities, such as those that are “threatening” and questions fraught with social desirability effect. The results of this comparative study can be used to improve the tools and to allow a deeper analysis of cross-national survey data.

This article is the republished version of:

Sensitive Questions in Cross-National Comparative Surveys

Notes

English translation © 2019 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2017 “Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia.” “Shchepetil’nye voprosy v mezhstranovykh sravnitel’nykh oprosakh,” Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniia, 2017, no. 12, pp. 55-64.

Translated by Kenneth Cargill.

Translation reprinted from Russian Education and Society, vol. 61, no. 1. DOI: 10.1080/10609393.2019.1738783.

Anna Vladimirovna Andreenkova, candidate of political sciences, deputy director of the Institute for Comparative Social Research (CESSI), Moscow, Russia; E-mail: [email protected]

1. This question property was first analyzed in the English-language methodological literature, where it was described using the term “sensitivity.” In Russian academia, no specific term has been coined yet. Often, the English term in Russian transcription (“sensitivnyy”) is used for this purpose. Possible options could be the adjectives “delicate” (“shchekotlivyy”), “difficult to talk about” (“trudnyy dlya obsuzhdeniya”), “uncomfortable” (“nekomfortnyy”) or “inconvenient” (“neudobnyy”), but each of them, taken by itself, focuses on only one aspect of this property. Therefore, we propose to use the term “sensitive questions” (“shchepetil’nye voprosy”) as the phrase that comes closest to the English term in meaning. It is commonly used in the Russian literature, and it correctly describes the property under discussion.

2. When survey administrators use questions that are allegedly highly sensitive for respondents, there is a risk that inaccurate answers to these items will be obtained. This is why the relationship between the level of sensitivity and specific behavior may look weaker than it actually is. However, due to the lack of any alternative, we decided to apply this method.

3. Similar psychological reactions were identified in a study conducted by T.I. Larina [Larina, 2015].