Optimal Differentially Private Randomized Response Designs to Collect Sensitive Binary Data

Abstract: Randomized response has long been used in statistical surveys to estimate the proportion of sensitive groups in a population while protecting the privacy of respondents. More recently, this technique has been adopted by organizations that generate synthetic data from real personal binary data, enabling data storage and sharing for research or commercial purposes without compromising individual privacy. While the main aim in statistical surveys is the accurate estimation of sensitive group proportions, synthetic data generation prioritizes privacy preservation. To achieve precise estimation, statisticians typically determine the required sample size based on a pre-specified power of hypothesis testing. However, we find that designing randomized response studies to achieve high statistical power can come at the expense of increased privacy risk. In this work, we analyze how various established randomized response designs perform with respect to both statistical power and differential privacy (DP), the latter quantifying the risk of privacy leakage. We demonstrate that commonly used design strategies may result in either insufficient power or excessive privacy loss. To address this issue, we propose optimal choices of design parameters across different randomized response models to simultaneously achieve the desired statistical power and maintain differential privacy within acceptable bounds. The practical advantages of these optimal designs are illustrated through comprehensive simulation studies and a real data application. Additionally, we present a user-friendly Shiny-App to assist researchers in designing randomized response studies and performing the associated data analyses.