Sensitive Topics

There is no widely accepted definition of the term sensitive topics, even though most survey researchers would probably agree that certain subjects, such as income, sex, and religion, are definitely examples of the concept. In their classic text Asking Questions: A Practical Guide to Questionnaire Design, Seymour Sudman and Norman Bradburn avoided the term altogether and instead talked about “threatening” questions.

Part of the problem is that topics or questions can be sensitive in at least three different, though related, senses. The first sense is that of intrusiveness. Some questions are inherently offensive to some (or most) respondents; some topics are seen as inappropriate for a survey. Respondents may find it offensive to be asked about their religion in a government survey or about their income in a study done by market researchers. Sudman and Bradburn used the phrase “taboo topics,” and some topics are clearly out of bounds in certain contexts. It would be odd (and impolite) to ask a new coworker intimate details about his or her sexual life or medical history; in the same way, respondents may regard some survey topics or questions as none of the researcher's business. A second sense of “sensitivity” involves the risk that the information may fall into the wrong hands. Teenagers in a survey on smoking may worry that their parents will overhear their answers; respondents to the American Community Survey may worry that the Internal Revenue Service will be able to access their answers to the income questions on the survey. Questions are sensitive in this second sense when they raise concerns that some third party (whether another household member or some agency or business other than the survey firm) will learn what the respondents have reported. For example, in business surveys, responding firms may worry that their competitors will gain proprietary information about them. The final sense of sensitivity involves the social desirability of the behavior or attitude that is the subject of the question. A question is sensitive in this sense when it asks respondents to admit that their behavior has not lived up to some widely held standard or norm; such questions place the respondents at risk of embarrassing themselves. The embarrassing admission may involve perceived sins of commission (using illicit drugs or having had an abortion), or perceived sins of omission (not exercising enough or failing to vote in a recent election). Perhaps because the concept of sensitivity has multiple senses, there is no generally accepted method for measuring the sensitivity of a question or topic. Instead, most researchers rely on their professional judgment (including their intuitions) about which questions are likely to be sensitive.

These different senses of the term have somewhat different implications for surveys. For example, what makes a question intrusive appears to be the combination of the topic and sponsor of the survey. For example, although it would appear reasonable to most people for the Council of American Catholic Bishops to do a survey on religion, it may not appear reasonable to many for the U.S. Census Bureau to do so. Similarly, people worry more about disclosure risk or embarrassment when they have something they do not want others to find out and they fear the consequences of its becoming known. The consequences may, in turn, depend on who finds out. For a teenage girl, it is one thing for a classmate to learn that she occasionally smokes a cigarette but it may be quite a different thing for her parents to find out.

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