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Estimates of Lifetime Extradyadic Sex Using a Hybrid of Randomized Response Technique and Crosswise Design

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Abstract

The prevalence of extradyadic sex (EDS) tends to be underestimated due to underreporting in national surveys, which use direct questioning. Self-administered questionnaires can reduce this response bias but may cause the anxiety of privacy exposure. Randomized Response Technique (RRT) can ensure participants’ confidentiality under the randomized design of indirect questions to and was found to yield more valid estimates of sexual or other sensitive behaviors than direct questions. This study estimated the EDS rate among Taiwanese aged 18 years and over, using a hybrid of Randomized Response Technique and Crosswise Design (RRTCD) and the Weighted Conditional Likelihood (WCL) estimator. The data analyzed were from the 2012 Taiwan Social Change Survey, in which the answer to the innocuous question from the unrelated-question RRT of Greenberg, Abul-Ela, Simmons, and Horvitz (1969) was obtained indirectly from a demographic question related to the innocuous question. This RRTCD provided more information on the innocuous question to effectively improve the efficiency of the unrelated-question RRT of Greenberg et al. The WCL estimator was found to be more efficient than the Greenberg et al. estimator for estimating the EDS rate in terms of smaller standard errors and smaller differences in the levels of EDS across sociodemographics and extramarital-sex attitudes. Similar to those suggested in the literature, the estimated rates of EDS in two subsamples were higher among men, homosexuals, those who have or had wages, and those who accepted extramarital sex. The levels of EDS varying with sociodemographics were different between the married and the unmarried.

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Notes

  1. A total of 359 townships were the primary sampling unit (PSU), and these were stratified into seven strata based on urbanization. Three stages of sampling were employed in each stratum, respectively the selection of PSU, secondary sampling unit, and participants.

  2. The International Social Survey Programme is a continuing annual program of cross-national collaboration on surveys covering topics important for social science research. http://www.issp.org/.

  3. According to population data by marital status from the Department of Household Registration Affairs, Ministry of Interior, the divorce rate of Taiwanese aged 15 and over increased from 1 % in 1979 to 2 % in 1989 and 3 % in 1996; increased 1 % every 3–4 years during 1997–2014; and was 7.5 % in 2012. Nevertheless, no figures concerning cohabitation are available for reference (Directorate-general of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, Executive Yuan, R.O.C. (Taiwan), 2015). By contrast, various national surveys in Taiwan such as TSCS, Social Image Survey, and Taiwan's Election and Democratization Study revealed that among Taiwanese aged 18 or 20 years old and over, the divorce rates were 3.5–5.5 % during 2005–2013, while the percentages of cohabitation were less than 0.5 % during 1991–2004; then fluctuated between 0.5 and 1.2 % (Center for Survey Research, Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, 2015). The divorce rates in this study and other national surveys were thus generally lower than official statistics (a rough comparison due to 3–5 years difference in age), while the percentage of cohabitation in this study is similar to that in other national surveys. One may argue that both rates are much lower than what we have learned from reality. It may be because response options for divorce and cohabitation appear more sensitive to social desirability than other options of marital status in face-to-face interviews in Chinese culture, where participants now may still tend to hide the fact they cohabit with someone by answering that they are either married or unmarried (Yang, 2014).

  4. This study defined the level of education as the highest level of school the participants attend(ed), no matter whether they finished this level or not.

  5. According to Dewevre-Fourcade (1992), cohabitation can be defined in a broad sense (living together with a stable sex relationship but no sense of family) and a restricted way (living together like a married couple without a marriage contract). The latter usually lasts longer than the former and is adopted by the majority. TSCS allowed the participants to define cohabitation for themselves.

  6. The distributions of all the sociodemographics in this final sample were similar to those prior to case exclusion, with statistically insignificant differences between the two samples (not shown due to limited space). There is no change in national representativeness.

  7. Please see footnote 5.

  8. The translation in this study focused on producing the best possible translation in practical and theoretical terms in English attached to the original meaning in Chinese. That is, the quality of translation was not based on back translation, which has been criticized for losing the meaning in the source language and potentially misleading insight into the quality of the target language text (Harkness, Villar, & Edwards, 2010).

  9. There were eight cards each with the numbers 1 and 3, four cards each with 2 and 5, and sixteen cards with the number 4. Detailed probability and statistical tests of this design are available on request.

  10. In order to improve response rate and response quality, interviewers were trained to motivate the participants to cooperate and explained the procedure of RRT using a brief instruction, which emphasized that RRT was just like a game with absolute assurance of personal privacy. Interviewers also needed to inform the participants that a few responses on a sensitive characteristic might be elicited from the cross table of the two questions in RRT, but all the individual answers would only be published as aggregate-level statistics, so individual answers would be absolutely unrecognizable.

  11. R. O. C. year is the abbreviation of the Republic of China calendar, the method of numbering years used in Taiwan. The first year of R. O. C. is the year of the founding of the Republic of China, which is 1912 of the Western calendar. Therefore, for example, the 105th year of the Republic of China is 2016 minus 1911 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minguo_calendar).

  12. According to Wiederman (1997a), the question for the attitudes toward extramarital sex in the General Social Survey was “What is your opinion about a married person having sexual relations with someone other than the marriage partner?” The answers were “always wrong,” “almost always wrong,” “wrong only sometimes,” and “not wrong at all.”

  13. An additional reason for dichotomizing variables lay in the percentages of the two permissive attitude response values being less than 5 % (3.2 and 2.6 % for “it depends” and “permitted,” respectively) which would result in biased estimates. Furthermore, as elaborated earlier, RRT can only collect data at the aggregate level. We cannot identify individual’s EDS level among the participants who answered question A in this study. Therefore, we cannot examine correlations or beta weight between the levels of EDS and hypothetical correlates at the individual level, but instead compare the estimates of EDS among different groups of participants at the aggregate level. Even retaining four responses, strictly speaking, we had better treat them an ordinal scale instead of an interval scale (continuous variable). In this case, we should use statistics such as logistic regression, rather than correlation and beta weight.

  14. As elaborated earlier and in footnote 5, the low percentage of cohabitation found in this study may be because the item designed to collect marital status did not define this, but let the participants define it for themselves. The participants, however, tended to adopt a restricted definition of cohabitation, partly due to sensitivity and social desirability concerns, so they either answered single or married. Moreover, lifetime EDS in this study focused on ever-engaged EDS, no matter how many times the participants have done so. Therefore, it would not be so surprising if one-fifth of the never-married were involved in EDS as RRTCD estimated.

  15. They are telephone surveys based on nationally representative probability samples with 1129 and 1076 valid cases respectively collected by Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) Poll Center in 2002 and Market Survey and Research Center at National Cheng-Chi University in 2009 (Gender/Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan, 2010; Shi, 2009). The participants aged over 20 were asked about whether they and their spouse have had extramarital affairs. The estimates of spouses’ affairs were based on proxy reports.

  16. The figures from America were based on General Social Surveys, annually conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago and based on nationally representative samples of participants at least 18 years old. Concerning extramarital sex, the participants were limited to those who had ever been married and were asked “Have you ever had sex with someone other than your husband or wife while you were married?” (Atkins et al., 2001; Wiederman, 1997a). The estimated rates of the ever-married men and women in America having had extramarital sex were 21 and 11 % in 1991 (Greeley, 1994). The figures for the ever-married men had not changed in two decades, but those of the married women had had an increase of 4.4 % as of 2010 (Shi, 2009; “Rate of Extramarital Sex,” 2013; Wiederman, 1997a).

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  1. Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, 128 Sec. 2 Academia Road, Nankang, Taipei, Taiwan

    Su-hao Tu & Shu-hui Hsieh

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Tu, Sh., Hsieh, Sh. Estimates of Lifetime Extradyadic Sex Using a Hybrid of Randomized Response Technique and Crosswise Design. Arch Sex Behav 46, 373–384 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0740-4

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