Domain estimators for the item count technique - ARCHIVED

The item count technique, which is an indirect questioning technique, was devised to estimate the proportion of people for whom a sensitive key item holds true. This is achieved by having respondents report the number of descriptive phrases, from a list of several phrases that they believe apply to themselves. The list for half the sample includes the key item, and the list for the other half does not include the key item. The difference in mean number of selected phrases is an estimator of the proportion. In this article, we propose two new methods, referred to as the cross-based method and the double cross-based method, by which proportions in subgroups or domains are estimated based on the data obtained via the item count technique. In order to assess the precision of the proposed methods, we conducted simulation experiments using data obtained from a survey of the Japanese national character. The results illustrate that the double cross-based method is much more accurate than the traditional stratified method, and is less likely to produce illogical estimates.