Sensitive Survey Questions: Measuring Attitudes Regarding Female Genital Cutting Through a List Experiment

Elisabetta De Cao*, Clemens Lutz

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

16 Citations (Scopus)
72 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Potential bias in survey responses is higher if sensitive outcomes are measured. This study analyses attitudes towards female genital cutting (FGC) in Ethiopia. A list experiment is designed to elicit truthful answers about FGC support and compares these outcomes with the answers given to a direct question. Our results confirm that the average bias is substantial as answers to direct questions underestimate the FGC support by about 10 percentage points. Moreover, our results provide suggestive but not statistically significant evidence that this bias is more pronounced among uneducated women and women targeted by an NGO intervention (not randomly assigned).

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)871-892
Number of pages22
JournalOxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics
Volume80
Issue number5
Early online date11-Jan-2018
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct-2018

Keywords

  • STATISTICAL-ANALYSIS
  • COUNT TECHNIQUE
  • BEHAVIOR
  • BIAS

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