A note on combining randomized response and direct response

The randomized response techniques for collecting data on sensitive variables have been in vogue for over three decades now. Padmawar and Vijayan (J. Statist. Plann. Inference 90 (2000) 293) introduced a new method of randomization and compared it with the traditional one. It has been observed that some people in the population are willing to furnish information directly. However, such direct response is not collected as the interviewers have been instructed to collect only randomized response. Here we see that it is possible to combine the direct and randomized responses to give a better estimator than that based on randomized response alone. (c) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.