Measuring Bullying Among Students Using the Randomized Response Technique

Abstract

Due to its sensitive nature, bullying is difficult to study empirically. The prevalence and the frequency of bullying are difficult to estimate using standard survey techniques due to the tendency of respondents to hide information in such settings. This behavior is known as social desirability, that is, the desire to make a favorable impression on others, and poses a significant threat to the validity of self-reports. Since the 1960s a variety of questioning methods have been devised to ensure respondents' anonymity and to reduce the incidence of evasive answers and the over/underreporting of socially undesirable acts. These methods are generally known as indirect questioning techniques (IQTs) and they obey the principle that no direct question is posed to survey participants. Therefore, their privacy is protected because the responses remain confidential to the respondents and, consequently, their true status remains uncertain and undisclosed to both the interviewer and the researcher. This paper describes a survey asking sensitive qualitative questions about bullying, conducted using one of the IQT, concretely, randomized response technique (RRT). This work tests the efficacy of RRT in establishing higher rates of truthful self-reporting when compared to traditional survey techniques.