Replication Data for: Pouring water into wine: revisiting the advantages of the crosswise model for asking sensitive questions

The Crosswise Model (CM) has been proposed as a method to reduce effects of social desirability in sensitive questions. In contrast with former variants of Randomized Response Techniques (RRTs), the crosswise model neither offers a self-protective response strategy, nor does it require a random device. For these reasons, the crosswise model has received a lot of positive attention in the scientific community. However, previous validation studies have mostly analysed negatively connoted behaviour and thus draw on the principle of “more is better”. Higher prevalence rates of socially undesirable behaviour in the crosswise model cannot be attributed unambiguously to a reduction in social desirability bias, since random ticking resulting from respondent confusion about the question format cannot be ruled out as an alternative explanation. Unlike most research on crosswise models and randomized response techniques, we conduct an experiment in a general population survey that does not assess negatively connoted but socially desirable behaviour (namely, whether respondents had donated blood within the last twelve months). This design allows us to empirically disentangle the reduction of social desirability bias from random responses. We find signifcantly higher prevalence rates in the crosswise condition than in the direct question. What is more, we could not identify any subgroup of respondents, in which the CM successfully reduced social desirability bias. These results cast doubts on the validity of cosswise models. They suggest that a considerable number of respondents do not comply with the intended procedure.

交叉模型（Crosswise Model, CM）被提出作为一种缓解敏感问题中社会期望性偏差影响的方法。与既往各类随机应答技术（Randomized Response Techniques, RRTs）变体不同，交叉模型既未提供自我保护型应答策略，也无需使用随机化工具。基于上述优势，交叉模型在科学界获得了广泛的正向关注。然而，既往的有效性研究大多针对负向关联行为展开分析，因此遵循“越多越好”的原则。交叉模型中社会不受欢迎行为的更高发生率，无法明确归因于社会期望性偏差的缓解，因为受访者因对题目格式产生困惑而出现的随机勾选行为，无法被排除为另一可能的解释。与多数交叉模型及随机应答技术相关研究不同，我们在一项普通人群调查中开展了实验，未评估负向关联行为，而是聚焦社会称许性行为——即受访者是否在过去12个月内捐献过血液。该实验设计使我们能够通过实证手段，将社会期望性偏差的缓解与随机应答效应区分开来。我们发现，交叉模型组的行为发生率显著高于直接提问组。此外，我们未发现任何一组受访者群体可使交叉模型有效缓解社会期望性偏差。上述结果对交叉模型的有效性提出了质疑，这表明相当数量的受访者未遵循实验预设的应答流程。