Indirect Methods of Data Collection and Analysis from Surveys

This book provides a chronological, comprehensive, and up-to-date review of indirect methods of data collection from the human population such as randomized response, non-randomized response, item count, item sum, nominative, and negative questioning techniques. Such surveys include questionnaires on sensitive issues such as domestic violence, the history of induced abortion, involvement in fraud, plagiarism, affiliation with political parties, opinion of government policies, and religious practices, to name a few. The book also studies methods of drawing inferences from such data. The methods provided in the book can be applied to any complex survey design and a wide class of estimators. This book may serve as a handbook of indirect survey methodologies, as readers may receive a wide spectrum of materials from this book alone. Most of the randomized response (RR) techniques are described with the aid of diagrams so that readers can easily understand the randomization techniques, their applicability, and their complexity in real surveys. Applications of different indirect survey methodologies in various areas are presented.

Raghunath Arnab is Honorary Professor at the Department of Statistics, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Earlier, he served as Professor at various universities including the University of Botswana; the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, India; the R.K. Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, India; Sultan Qaboos University, Oman; the University of Nirobi, Kenya; the National University of Lesotho, Lesotho; the University of Ibadan, Nigeria; and the University of Ife, Nigeria. He also visited the Department of Mathematics at Texas A&M University, USA, and the University of Alberta, Canada, among others.

Born in India, Prof. Arnab obtained his Ph.D. in Statistics from the Indian Statistical Institute, Calcutta, India, in 1981; M.Sc. in Statistics; and B.Sc. Honors in Statistics from the University of Calcutta, respectively, in 1972 and 1970. With more than 47 years of teaching and research experience, he has taught several courses in statistics, mathematics, and business statistics and supervised several Ph.D. and master’s students. He served as External Examiner and Assessor for several universities. He also served as External Examiner for several Ph.D. and master’s theses.