2.1 The Crosswise Model

The crosswise model was developed by Yu et al. (Reference Yu, Tian and Tang2008) to overcome several limitations with randomized response techniques (Blair, Imai, and Zhou Reference Blair, Imai and Zhou2015; Warner Reference Warner1965). In political science and related disciplines, this design has been used to study corruption (Corbacho et al. Reference Corbacho, Gingerich, Oliveros and Ruiz-Vega2016; Oliveros and Gingerich Reference Oliveros and Gingerich2020), “shy voters” and strategic voting (Waubert de Puiseau, Hoffmann, and Musch Reference Waubert de Puiseau, Hoffmann and Musch2017), self-reported turnout (Kuhn and Vivyan Reference Kuhn and Vivyan2018), prejudice against female leaders (Hoffmann and Musch Reference Hoffmann and Musch2019), xenophobia (Hoffmann and Musch Reference Hoffmann and Musch2016), and anti-refugee attitudes (Hoffmann, Meisters, and Musch Reference Hoffmann, Meisters and Musch2020). The crosswise model asks the respondent to read two statements whose veracity is known only to her. For example, Corbacho et al. (Reference Corbacho, Gingerich, Oliveros and Ruiz-Vega2016) study corruption in Costa Rica with the following question:

Crosswise Question: How many of the following statements are true?

Statement A: In order to avoid paying a traffic ticket, I would be willing to pay a bribe to a police officer.

Statement B: My mother was born in October, November, or December.

• • $\underline {\text {Both}}$ statements are true, or $\underline {\text {neither}}$ statement is true.

• • $\underline {\text {Only one}}$ statement is true.

Statement A is the sensitive statement that researchers would have asked directly if there had been no worry about sensitivity bias. The quantity of interest is the population proportion of individuals who agree with Statement A.Footnote ⁷ In contrast, Statement B is a nonsensitive statement whose population prevalence is ex ante known to researchers.Footnote ⁸ The crosswise model then asks respondents whether “both statements are true, or neither statement is true” or “only one statement is true.” Respondents may also have the option of choosing “Refuse to Answer” or “Don’t Know.”

Importantly, the respondent’s answer does not allow interviewers (or anyone) to know whether he agrees or disagrees with the sensitive statement, which fully protects his privacy. Nevertheless, the crosswise model allows us to estimate the proportion of respondents for which the sensitive statement is true via a simple calculation. Suppose that the observed proportion of respondents choosing “both or neither is true” is 0.65 while the known population proportion for Statement B is 0.25. If the sensitive and nonsensitive statements are statistically independent, it follows that: $\widehat {\mathbb {P}}(\textsf {TRUE-TRUE} \cup \textsf {FALSE-FALSE}) = 0.65 \Rightarrow \widehat {\mathbb {P}}(\textsf {A=TRUE})\times \mathbb {P}(\textsf {B=TRUE}) +\widehat {\mathbb {P}}(\textsf {A=FALSE})\times \mathbb {P}(\textsf {B=FALSE}) = 0.65 \Rightarrow \widehat {\mathbb {P}}(\textsf {A=TRUE})\times 0.25 + ( 1 - \widehat {\mathbb {P}}(\textsf {A=TRUE}))\times 0.75 = 0.65 \Rightarrow \widehat {\mathbb {P}}(\textsf {A=TRUE}) = \frac {0.65-0.75}{-0.5}=0.2. $ , where $\widehat {\mathbb {P}}$ is an estimated proportion.

2.2 Relative Advantages and Limitations

Despite its recent introduction to political scientists by Corbacho et al. (Reference Corbacho, Gingerich, Oliveros and Ruiz-Vega2016) and Gingerich et al. (Reference Gingerich, Oliveros, Corbacho and Ruiz-Vega2016), the crosswise model has not yet been widely used in political science. We think that the primary reason is that it has not been clear to many political scientists how and when the crosswise model is preferable to other indirect questioning techniques. To help remedy this problem, Table 1 summarizes relative advantages of the crosswise model over randomized response, list experiments, and endorsement experiments, which are more commonly used survey techniques in political science (see also Blair et al. Reference Blair, Coppock and Moor2020; Blair, Imai, and Lyall Reference Blair, Imai and Lyall2014; Hoffmann et al. Reference Hoffmann, Diedenhofen, Verschuere and Musch2015; Höglinger and Jann Reference Höglinger and Jann2018; Meisters et al. Reference Meisters, Hoffmann and Musch2020b; Rosenfeld et al. Reference Rosenfeld, Imai and Shapiro2016).Footnote ⁹

Table 1

Relative advantages of the crosswise model.

Note: This table shows potential (dis)advantages of the crosswise model compared to randomized response techniques (RR), list experiments (List), and endorsement experiments (Endorsement).

The potential advantages of the crosswise model are that the design (1) fully protects respondents’ privacy, (2) provides no incentive for respondents to lie about their answers because there is no “safe” (self-protective) option, (3) does not require splitting the sample (as in list and endorsement experiments), (4) does not need an external randomization device (as in randomized response), (5) is relatively efficient compared with other designs, and (6) asks about sensitive attributes directly (unlike in endorsement experiments). In contrast, the potential disadvantage of this design is that its instructions may be harder to understand compared with those of list and endorsement experiments (but are likely much easier than for randomized response). In addition, the crosswise model requires auxiliary data in the form of a known probability distribution of the nonsensitive information (as in randomized response).

Rosenfeld et al. (Reference Rosenfeld, Imai and Shapiro2016) show that randomized response appears to outperform list and endorsement experiments by yielding the least biased and most efficient estimate of the ground truth. Since the crosswise model was developed to outperform randomized response (Yu et al. Reference Yu, Tian and Tang2008), in principle, the crosswise model is expected to better elicit candid answers from survey respondents than any other technique. To date, several validation studies appear to confirm this expectation (Hoffmann et al. Reference Hoffmann, Diedenhofen, Verschuere and Musch2015; Hoffmann and Musch Reference Hoffmann and Musch2016; Höglinger and Jann Reference Höglinger and Jann2018; Höglinger, Jann, and Diekmann Reference Höglinger, Jann and Diekmann2016; Jann, Jerke, and Krumpal Reference Jann, Jerke and Krumpal2012; Jerke et al. Reference Jerke, Johann, Rauhut, Thomas and Velicu2020; Meisters et al. Reference Meisters, Hoffmann and Musch2020a).

Recently, however, it has become increasingly clear that the design has two major limitations, which may undermine confidence in the method. First, it may produce a relatively large share of inattentive respondents who give random answers (Enzmann Reference Enzmann, Eifler and Faulbaum2017; Heck et al. Reference Heck, Hoffmann and Moshagen2018; John et al. Reference John, Loewenstein, Acquisti and Vosgerau2018; Schnapp Reference Schnapp2019). For example, Walzenbach and Hinz (Reference Walzenbach and Hinz2019, 14) conclude that “a considerable number of respondents do not comply with the intended procedure” and it “seriously limit[s] the positive reception the [crosswise model] has received in the survey research so far.” Second, it appears to overestimate the prevalence of sensitive attributes and yields relatively high false positive rates (Höglinger and Jann Reference Höglinger and Jann2018; Kuhn and Vivyan Reference Kuhn and Vivyan2018; Meisters et al. Reference Meisters, Hoffmann and Musch2020a; Nasirian et al. Reference Nasirian2018). After finding this “blind spot,” Höglinger and Diekmann (Reference Höglinger and Diekmann2017, 135) lament that “[p]revious validation studies appraised the [crosswise model] for its easy applicability and seemingly more valid results. However, none of them considered false positives. Our results strongly suggest that in reality the [crosswise model] as implemented in those studies does not produce more valid data than [direct questioning].” Nevertheless, we argue that with a proper understanding of these problems, it is possible to solve them and even extend the usefulness of the crosswise model. To do so, we need to first understand how inattentive respondents lead to bias in estimated prevalence rates.

2.3 Inattentive Respondents Under the Crosswise Model

The problem of inattentive respondents is well known to survey researchers, who have used a variety of strategies for detecting them such as attention checks (Oppenheimer, Meyvis, and Davidenko Reference Oppenheimer, Meyvis and Davidenko2009). Particularly in self-administered surveys, estimates of the prevalence of inattentiveness are often as high as 30%–50% (Berinsky, Margolis, and Sances Reference Berinsky, Margolis and Sances2014). Recently, inattention has also been discussed with respect to list experiments (Ahlquist Reference Ahlquist2018; Blair, Chou, and Imai Reference Blair, Chou and Imai2019). Inattentive respondents are also common under the crosswise model, as we might expect given its relatively complex instructions (Alvarez et al. Reference Alvarez, Atkeson, Levin and Li2019). Researchers have estimated the proportion of inattentive respondents in surveys featuring the crosswise model to be from 12% (Höglinger and Diekmann Reference Höglinger and Diekmann2017) to 30% (Walzenbach and Hinz Reference Walzenbach and Hinz2019).Footnote ¹⁰

To proceed, we first define inattentive respondents under the crosswise model as respondents who randomly choose between “both or neither is true” and “only one statement is true.” We assume that random answers may arise due to multiple reasons, including nonresponse, noncompliance, cognitive difficulty, lying, or any combination of these (Heck et al. Reference Heck, Hoffmann and Moshagen2018; Jerke et al. Reference Jerke, Johann, Rauhut and Thomas2019; Meisters et al. Reference Meisters, Hoffmann and Musch2020a).

We now consider the consequences of inattentive respondents in the crosswise model. Figure 1 plots the bias in the conventional estimator based on hypothetical (and yet typical) data from the crosswise model.Footnote ¹¹ The figure clearly shows the expected bias toward 0.5 and suggests that the bias grows as the percentage of inattentive respondents increases and as the quantity of interest (labeled as $\pi $ ) gets close to 0. We also find that the size of the bias does not depend on the prevalence of the nonsensitive item. To preview the performance of our bias-corrected estimator, each plot also shows estimates based on our estimator, which is robust to the presence of inattentive respondents regardless of the value of the quantity of interest. One key takeaway is that researchers must be more cautious about inattentive respondents when the quantity of interest is expected to be close to zero, because these cases tend to produce larger biases.

Figure 1

Consequences of inattentive respondents. Note: This figure illustrates how the conventional estimator (thick solid line) is biased toward 0.5, whereas the proposed bias-corrected estimator (thin solid line) captures the ground truth (dashed line). Both estimates are shown with bootstrapped 95% confidence intervals (with 1,000 replications). Each panel is based on our simulation in which we set the number of respondents $n=2,000$ , the proportion of a sensitive anchor item $\pi '=0$ , the proportions for nonsensitive items in the crosswise and anchor questions $p=0.15$ and $p'=0.15$ , respectively. The bias increases as the percentage of inattentive respondents increases and the true prevalence rate ( $\pi $ ) decreases. The top-left panel notes parameter values for all six panels (for notation, see the next section).

Figure 1 also speaks to critiques of the crosswise model that have focused on the incidence of false positives, as opposed to bias overall (Höglinger and Diekmann Reference Höglinger and Diekmann2017; Höglinger and Jann Reference Höglinger and Jann2018; Meisters et al. Reference Meisters, Hoffmann and Musch2020a; Nasirian et al. Reference Nasirian2018). While these studies are often agnostic about the source of false positives, the size of the biases in this figure suggests that the main source is likely inattentive respondents.

Several potential solutions to this problem have been recently discussed. The first approach is to identify inattentive survey takers via comprehension checks, remove them from data, and perform estimation and inference on the “cleaned” data (i.e., listwise deletion; Höglinger and Diekmann Reference Höglinger and Diekmann2017; Höglinger and Jann Reference Höglinger and Jann2018; Meisters et al. Reference Meisters, Hoffmann and Musch2020a). One drawback of this method is that it is often challenging to discover which respondents are being inattentive. Moreover, this approach leads to a biased estimate of the quantity of interest unless researchers make the ignorability assumption that having a sensitive attribute is statistically independent of one’s attentiveness (Alvarez et al. Reference Alvarez, Atkeson, Levin and Li2019, 148), which is a reasonably strong assumption in most situations.Footnote ¹² The second solution detects whether respondents answered the crosswise question randomly via direct questioning and then adjusts the prevalence estimates accordingly (Enzmann Reference Enzmann, Eifler and Faulbaum2017; Schnapp Reference Schnapp2019). This approach is valid if researchers assume that direct questioning is itself not susceptible to inattentiveness or social desirability bias as well as that the crosswise question does not affect respondents’ answers to the direct question. Such an assumption, however, is highly questionable, and the proposed corrections have several undesirable properties (Online Appendix B). Below, we present an alternative solution to the problem, which yields an unbiased estimate of the quantity of interest with a much weaker set of assumptions than in existing solutions.

3.1 The Setup

Consider a single sensitive question in a survey with n respondents drawn from a finite target population via simple random sampling with replacement. Suppose that there are no missing data and no respondent opts out of the crosswise question. Let $\pi $ (quantity of interest) be the population proportion of individuals who agree with the sensitive statement (e.g., I am willing to bribe a police officer). Let p be the known population proportion of people who agree with the nonsensitive statement (e.g., My mother was born in January). Finally, let $\lambda $ (and 1 - $\lambda $ ) be the population proportion of individuals who choose “both or neither is true” (and “only one statement is true”). Assuming $\pi \mathop {\perp \!\!\!\!\perp } p$ , Yu et al. (Reference Yu, Tian and Tang2008) introduced the following identity as a foundation of the crosswise model:

(1a) $$ \begin{align} \mathbb{P}(\text{TRUE-TRUE} \cup \text{FALSE-FALSE}) = \lambda = \pi p + (1 - \pi)(1-p). \end{align} $$

Solving the identity with respect to $\pi $ yields $\pi = \frac {\lambda + p - 1}{2p - 1}$ . Based on this identity, the authors proposed the naïve crosswise estimator:

(1b) $$ \begin{align} \widehat\pi_{CM} = \frac{\widehat\lambda + p - 1}{2p - 1}, \end{align} $$

where $\widehat \lambda $ is the observed proportion of respondents choosing “both or neither is true” and $p \neq 0.5$ .

We call Equation (1b) the naïve estimator, because it does not take into account the presence of inattentive respondents who give random answers in this design. When one or more respondents do not follow the instruction and randomly pick their answers, the proportion must be (generalizing Walzenbach and Hinz Reference Walzenbach and Hinz2019, 10):

(1c) $$ \begin{align} \lambda = \Big\{ \pi p + (1-\pi)(1-p) \Big\}\gamma + \kappa(1-\gamma), \end{align} $$

where $\gamma $ is the proportion of attentive respondents and $\kappa $ is the probability with which inattentive respondents pick “both or neither is true.”

We then quantify the bias in the naïve estimator as follows (Online Appendix A.1):

(1d) $$ \begin{align} B_{CM} & \equiv \mathbb{E}[\widehat\pi_{CM}] - \pi \end{align} $$

(1e) $$ \begin{align} & = \Bigg( \frac{1}{2} - \frac{1}{2\gamma} \Bigg)\Bigg( \frac{\lambda - \kappa}{p-\frac{1}{2}} \Bigg).\hspace{-3.8pc} \end{align} $$

Here, $B_{CM}$ is a bias with respect to our quantity of interest caused by inattentive respondents. Under regularity conditions ( $\pi < 0.5$ , $p < \frac {1}{2}$ , and $\lambda> \kappa $ ), which are met in typical crosswise models, the bias term is always positive (Online Appendix A.2). This means that the conventional crosswise estimator always overestimates the population prevalence of sensitive attributes in the presence of inattentive respondents.

3.2 Bias-Corrected Crosswise Estimator

To address this pervasive issue, we propose the following bias-corrected crosswise estimator:

(2a) $$ \begin{align} \widehat \pi_{BC} =\widehat\pi_{CM} - \widehat B_{CM},\\[-24pt] \nonumber \end{align} $$

where $\widehat B_{CM}$ is an unbiased estimator of the bias:

(2b) $$ \begin{align} \widehat B_{CM} = \Bigg( \frac{1}{2} - \frac{1}{2\widehat\gamma} \Bigg)\Bigg( \frac{\widehat\lambda - \frac{1}{2}}{p-\frac{1}{2}} \Bigg), \end{align} $$

and $\widehat {\gamma }$ is the estimated proportion of attentive respondents in the crosswise question (we discuss how to obtain $\widehat {\gamma }$ below).Footnote ¹³

This bias correction depends on several assumptions. First, we assume that inattentive respondents choose “both or neither is true” with probability 0.5.

Although many studies appear to take Assumption 1 for granted, the survey literature suggests that this assumption may not hold in many situations, because inattentive respondents tend to choose first listed items more than second (or lower) listed ones (Galesic et al. Reference Galesic, Tourangeau, Couper and Conrad2008; Krosnick Reference Krosnick1991). Nevertheless, it is still possible to design a survey to achieve $\kappa =0.5$ regardless of how inattentive respondents choose items. For example, we can achieve this goal by randomizing the order of the listed items in the crosswise model.

The main challenge in estimating the bias is to obtain the estimated proportion of attentive respondents in the crosswise question (i.e., $\widehat \gamma $ ). We solve this problem by adding an anchor question to the survey. The anchor question uses the same format as the crosswise question, but contains a sensitive statement with known prevalence. Our proposed solution generalizes the idea of “zero-prevalence sensitive items” first introduced by Höglinger and Diekmann (Reference Höglinger and Diekmann2017).Footnote ¹⁴ The essence of our approach is to use this additional sensitive statement to (1) estimate the proportion of inattentive respondents in the anchor question and (2) use it to correct for the bias in the crosswise question. For our running example (corruption in Costa Rica), we might consider the following anchor question:

Anchor Question: How many of the following statements is true?

Statement C: I have paid a bribe to be on the top of a waiting list for an organ transplant.

Statement D: My best friend was born in January, February, or March.

• • $\underline {\text {Both}}$ statements are true, or $\underline {\text {neither}}$ statement is true.

• • $\underline {\text {Only one}}$ statement is true.

Here, Statement C is a sensitive anchor statement whose prevalence is (expected to) be 0.Footnote ¹⁵ Statement D is a nonsensitive statement whose population prevalence is known to researchers just like the nonsensitive statement in the crosswise question. In addition, “Refuse to Answer” or “Don’t Know” may be included.

Let $\pi '$ be the known proportion for Statement C and $p'$ be the known proportion for Statement D (the “prime symbol” indicates the anchor question). Let $\lambda '$ (and 1 - $\lambda '$ ) be the population proportion of people selecting “both or neither is true” (and “only one statement is true”). Let $\gamma '$ be the population proportion of attentive respondents in the anchor question. The population proportion of respondents choosing “both or neither is true” in the anchor question then becomes:

(3a) $$ \begin{align} \lambda' = \Big\{ \pi' p' + (1-\pi')(1-p') \Big\}\gamma' + \kappa(1-\gamma'). \end{align} $$

Assuming $\kappa =0.5$ (Assumption 1) and $\pi '=0$ (zero-prevalence), we can rearrange Equation (3a) as:

(3b) $$ \begin{align} \gamma' = \frac{\lambda' - \frac{1}{2}}{\pi'p'+(1-\pi')(1-p')-\frac{1}{2}} = \frac{\lambda' - \frac{1}{2}}{\frac{1}{2}-p'}. \end{align} $$

We can then estimate the proportion of attentive respondents in the anchor question as:

(3c) $$ \begin{align} \widehat\gamma' = \frac{\widehat\lambda' - \frac{1}{2}}{\frac{1}{2}-p'}, \end{align} $$

where $\widehat {\lambda '}$ is the observed proportion of “both or neither is true” and $\mathbb {E}[\widehat \lambda ']=\lambda '$ (Online Appendix A.6).

Finally, our strategy is to use $\widehat \gamma '$ (obtained from the anchor question) as an estimate of $\gamma $ (the proportion of attentive respondents in the crosswise question) and plug it into Equation (2b) to estimate the bias. This final step yields the complete form of our bias-corrected estimator:

(3d) $$ \begin{align} \widehat \pi_{BC} =\widehat\pi_{CM} - \underbrace{\Bigg( \frac{1}{2} - \frac{1}{2}\Bigg[\frac{\frac{1}{2}-p'}{\widehat{\lambda}' - \frac{1}{2}}\Bigg] \Bigg)\Bigg( \frac{\widehat\lambda - \frac{1}{2}}{p-\frac{1}{2}} \Bigg) }_{\text{Estimated Bias: } \widehat{B}_{CM} (\widehat{\lambda}, \widehat{\lambda}', p, p') }, \end{align} $$

where it is clear that our estimator depends both on the crosswise question ( $\widehat {\lambda }$ and p) and the anchor question ( $\widehat {\lambda }'$ and $p'$ ). For the proposed estimator to be unbiased, we need to make two assumptions (Online Appendix A.7):

Assumption 2 will be violated, for example, if the crosswise question has a higher level of inattention than the anchor question. Assumption 3 will be violated, for instance, if asking the anchor question makes some respondents more willing to bribe a police officer in our running example.

Importantly, researchers can design their surveys to make these assumptions more plausible. For example, they can do so by randomizing the order of the anchor and crosswise questions, making them look alike, and using a statement for the anchor question that addresses the same topic and is equally sensitive as the one in the crosswise question. These considerations also help to satisfy Assumption 3 (we provide more examples and practical advice on how to do this in Online Appendix D).

Finally, we derive the variance of the bias-corrected crosswise estimator and its sample analog as follows (Online Appendix A.4):

(4a) $$ \begin{align} \mathbb{V}(\widehat \pi_{BC}) = \mathbb{V} \Bigg[\frac{\widehat{\lambda}}{\widehat{\lambda}'} \Bigg(\frac{\frac{1}{2}-p'}{2p-1} \Bigg) \Bigg] \quad \text{and} \quad \widehat{\mathbb{V}}(\widehat \pi_{BC}) = \widehat{\mathbb{V}} \Bigg[\frac{\widehat{\lambda}}{\widehat{\lambda}'} \Bigg(\frac{\frac{1}{2}-p'}{2p-1} \Bigg) \Bigg]. \end{align} $$

Note that these variances are necessarily larger than those of the conventional estimator, as the bias-corrected estimator also needs to estimate the proportion of (in)attentive respondents from data. Since no closed-form solutions to these variances are available, we employ the bootstrap to construct confidence intervals.

5.1 Sensitivity Analysis

While our bias-corrected estimator requires the anchor question, it may not always be available. For such surveys, we propose a sensitivity analysis that shows researchers the sensitivity of their naïve estimates to inattentive respondents and what assumptions they must make to preserve their original conclusions. Specifically, it offers sensitivity bounds for original crosswise estimates by applying the bias correction under varying levels of inattentive respondents. To illustrate, we attempted to apply our sensitivity analysis to all published crosswise studies of sensitive behaviors from 2008 to the present (49 estimates reported in 21 original studies). Figure 4 visualizes the sensitivity bounds for selected studies (see Online Appendix C.1 for full results). For each study, we plot the bias-corrected estimates against varying percentages of inattentive respondents under Assumption 1. Our sensitivity analysis suggests that many studies would not find any statistically significant difference between direct questioning and the crosswise model (echoing Höglinger and Diekmann Reference Höglinger and Diekmann2017, 135) unless they assume that less than 20% of the respondents were inattentive.Footnote ¹⁶

Figure 4

Sensitivity analysis of previous crosswise estimates. Note: This figure plots bias-corrected estimates of the crosswise model over varying percentages of inattentive respondents with the estimate based on direct questioning reported in each study.

5.2 Weighting

While the literature on the crosswise model usually assumes that survey respondents are drawn from a finite target population via simple random sampling with replacement, a growing share of surveys are administered with unrepresentative samples such as online opt-in samples (Franco et al. Reference Franco, Malhotra, Simonovits and Zigerell2017; Mercer, Lau, and Kennedy Reference Mercer, Lau and Kennedy2018). Online opt-in samples are known to be often unrepresentative of the entire population that researchers want to study (Bowyer and Rogowski Reference Bowyer and Rogowski2017; Malhotra and Krosnick Reference Malhotra and Krosnick2007), and analysts using such samples may wish to use weighting to extend their inferences into the population of real interest. In this light, we propose a simple way to include sample weights in the bias-corrected estimator. Online Appendix C.2 presents our theoretical and simulation results. The key idea is that we can apply a Horvitz–Thompson-type estimator (Horvitz and Thompson Reference Horvitz and Thompson1952) to the observed proportions in the crosswise and anchor questions (for a similar result without bias correction, see Chaudhuri (Reference Chaudhuri2012, 380) and Quatember (Reference Quatember2019, 270)).

5.3 Multivariate Regressions for the Crosswise Model

Political scientists often wish to not only estimate the prevalence of sensitive attributes (e.g., corruption in a legislature), but also analyze what kinds of individuals (e.g., politicians) are more likely to have the sensitive attribute and probe whether having the sensitive attribute is associated with another outcome (e.g., reelection). In this vein, regression models for the traditional crosswise model have been proposed in several studies (Gingerich et al. Reference Gingerich, Oliveros, Corbacho and Ruiz-Vega2016; Jann et al. Reference Jann, Jerke and Krumpal2012; Korndörfer, Krumpal, and Schmukle Reference Korndörfer, Krumpal and Schmukle2014; Vakilian, Mousavi, and Keramat Reference Vakilian, Mousavi and Keramat2014). Our contribution is to further extend such a framework by (1) enabling analysts to use the latent sensitive attribute both as an outcome and a predictor while (2) applying our bias correction. Our software can easily implement these regressions while also offering simple ways to perform post-estimation simulation (e.g., generating predicted probabilities with 95% confidence intervals).

We first introduce multivariate regressions in which the latent variable for having a sensitive attribute is used as an outcome variable. Let $Z_{i}\in \{0,1\}$ be a binary variable denoting if respondent i has a sensitive attribute and $T_{i}\in \{0,1\}$ be a binary variable denoting if the same respondent is attentive. Both of these quantities are unobserved latent variables. We define the regression model (conditional expectation) of interest as:

(5a) $$ \begin{align} \mathbb{E}[Z_{i}|\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}=\textbf{x}] = \mathbb{P}(Z_{i}=1|\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}=\textbf{x}) = \pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{x}), \end{align} $$

where $\textbf {X}_{\textbf{i}}$ is a random vector of respondent i’s characteristics, $\textbf {x}$ is a vector of realized values of such covariates, and $\boldsymbol {\beta }$ is a vector of unknown parameters that associate these characteristics with the probability of having the sensitive attribute. Our goal is to make inferences about these unknown parameters and to use estimated coefficients to produce predictions.

To apply our bias correction, we also introduce the following conditional expectation for being attentive:

(5b) $$ \begin{align} \mathbb{E}[T_{i}|\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}=\textbf{x}] = \mathbb{P}(T_{i}=1|\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}=\textbf{x}) = \gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{x}), \end{align} $$

where $\boldsymbol {\theta }$ is a vector of unknown parameters that associate the same respondent’s characteristics with the probability of being attentive. We then assume that $\pi _{\boldsymbol {\beta }}(\textbf {x}) = \text {logit}^{-1}(\boldsymbol {\beta } \textbf {X}_{\textbf{i}})$ and $\gamma _{\boldsymbol {\theta }}(\textbf {x}) = \text {logit}^{-1}(\boldsymbol {\theta } \textbf {X}_{\textbf{i}})$ , acknowledging that other functional forms are also possible.

Next, we substitute these quantities into Equation (1c) by assuming $\pi '=0$ (zero-prevalence for Statement C):

(6a) $$ \begin{align} \lambda_{\boldsymbol{\beta,\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) & = \underbrace{\Big(\pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) p + (1-\pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}))(1-p)\Big) \gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2}\Big(1-\gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}})\Big)}_{\text{Conditional probability of choosing "both or neither is true" in the crosswise question}}, \end{align} $$

(6b) $$ \begin{align} \lambda^{\prime}_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) & = \underbrace{ \Big( \frac{1}{2}-p' \Big)\gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2}}_{\text{Conditional probability of choosing "both or neither is true" in the anchor question}}. \end{align} $$

Finally, let $Y_{i}\in \{0,1\}$ and $A_{i}\in \{0,1\}$ be observed variables denoting if respondent i chooses “both or neither is true” in the crosswise and anchor questions, respectively. Assuming $Y_{i}\mathop {\perp \!\!\!\!\perp } A_{i}|\textbf {X}_{\textbf{i}}$ with Assumptions 1–3, we model that $Y_{i}$ and $A_{i}$ follow independent Bernoulli distributions with success probabilities $\lambda _{\boldsymbol {\beta ,\theta }}(\textbf {X}_{\textbf{i}})$ and $\lambda ^{\prime }_{\boldsymbol {\theta }}(\textbf {X}_{\textbf{i}})$ and construct the following likelihood function:

(7) $$ \begin{align} \mathcal{L}(\boldsymbol{\beta}, \boldsymbol{\theta}|\{\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}, Y_{i}, A_{i}\}_{i=1}^{n}, p, p') & \propto \prod_{i=1}^{n} \Big\{ \lambda_{\boldsymbol{\beta,\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) \Big\}^{Y_{i}} \Big\{ 1 - \lambda_{\boldsymbol{\beta,\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) \Big\}^{1-Y_{i}} \Big\{ \lambda^{\prime}_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) \Big\}^{A_{i}}\Big\{ 1 - \lambda^{\prime}_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) \Big\}^{1 - A_{i}}\nonumber\\ & = \prod_{i=1}^{n} \Big\{ \Big(\pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) p + (1-\pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}))(1-p)\Big) \gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2}\Big(1-\gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}})\Big) \Big\}^{Y_{i}}\nonumber\\ & \quad \ \ \ \times \Big\{ 1 - \Big[\Big(\pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) p + (1-\pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}))(1-p)\Big) \gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2}\Big(1-\gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}})\Big) \Big] \Big\}^{1-Y_{i}}\nonumber\\ & \quad \ \ \ \times \Big\{ \Big( \frac{1}{2}-p' \Big)\gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2} \Big\}^{A_{i}}\nonumber\\ & \quad \ \ \ \times \Big\{ 1 - \Big[ \Big( \frac{1}{2}-p' \Big)\gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2} \Big] \Big\}^{1 - A_{i}}\nonumber\\ & = \prod_{i=1}^{n} \Big\{ \Big((2p-1)\pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \Big(\frac{1}{2}-p \Big)\Big) \gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2} \Big\}^{Y_{i}}\nonumber\\ & \quad \ \ \ \times \Big\{ 1 - \Big[ \Big((2p-1)\pi_{\boldsymbol{\beta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \Big(\frac{1}{2}-p \Big)\Big) \gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2} \Big] \Big\}^{1-Y_{i}}\nonumber\\ & \quad \ \ \ \times \Big\{ \Big( \frac{1}{2}-p' \Big)\gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2} \Big\}^{A_{i}}\nonumber\\ & \quad \ \ \ \times \Big\{ 1 - \Big[ \Big( \frac{1}{2}-p' \Big)\gamma_{\boldsymbol{\theta}}(\textbf{X}_{\textbf{i}}) + \frac{1}{2} \Big] \Big\}^{1 - A_{i}}. \end{align} $$

Our simulations show that estimating the above model can recover both primary ( $\boldsymbol {\beta }$ ) and auxiliary parameters ( $\boldsymbol {\theta }$ ) (Online Appendix C.3). Online Appendix C.4 presents multivariate regressions in which the latent variable for having a sensitive attribute is used as a predictor.

5.4 Sample Size Determination and Parameter Selection

When using the crosswise model with our procedure, researchers may wish to choose the sample size and specify other design parameters (i.e., $\pi '$ , p, and $p'$ ) so that they can obtain (1) high statistical power for hypothesis testing and/or (2) narrow confidence intervals for precise estimation. To fulfill these needs, we develop power analysis and data simulation tools appropriate for our bias-corrected estimator (Online Appendix C.5).