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Randomizing Survey Answers For Accuracy
Saint Aardvark writes: "The New York Times reports that two researchers at IBM have come up with a way to persuade people to give correct answers to survey questions: randomize the results. Strangely enough, they can get accurate information out of the aggregate of enough answers -- but it's completely anonymized. Since conservative estimates say nearly half of all survey answers are bogus, there's an interest in persuading people to be more truthful. As ever, you can use the Random NY Times Registration Generator to falsify your registration details and read the article..."
As another poster observes, if you don't trust them with the data, why trust them to randomize it?
My college stats professor 10 years ago explained a simpler trick that puts control in the respondant's hands. It went something like this:
With each question, the respondant flips a coin and looks at the second hand of a clock. Only the respondant can see the coin or the clock.
If the second hand is between 1-30 seconds, they answer per the coin (e.g. heads=yes). If it's between 31-60, they tell the truth.
The surveyor, knows very precisely the number of 'lies', can extract accurate data, and the respondant has confidence and control over their privacy. All without a transistor.
Hey, it's me. The guy who put together and hosts the New York Times random login generator. First off, thanks for all your cards and letters - I originally just created that page to save myself some trouble, but I'm glad to see that everyone likes it so much.
I'd also like to remind anyone who wants to download, copy, and mirror the source of that page on their own servers, or even as an HTML page on your desktop or whatever. It's just javascript, so it's portable, and that way you'll still be able to use it when the NYT lawyers finally get around to noticing it or they start blocking requests from my page or something. (It will also help distribute my load, though I haven't had any real trouble yet...)