“Lost writing” technique: the history of the formation and prospects for the application of the method

Respondents' self-reports from surveys can be influenced by various mechanisms of social pressure and respondents' self-censorship. But do these mechanisms really significantly distort the results of surveys? Stanley Milgram and his colleagues introduced the experimental “lost letter” method to the sociological community about 50 years ago as an attempt to answer this kind of question. Since then, the method has been used more than a hundred times to study various sensitive issues related to politics, religion, racism, etc. This makes the method promising for the study of Russian society as well. However, in Russian conditions this technique has not been used, so an important task is presented to consider the history of the formation of «lost writing» as a sociological method, identifying its main possibilities and limitations. The former are not only that it can be used to unobtrusively measure attitudes on sensitivities, but also that it can be modified to suit electronic communication conditions. The latter can be divided into methodological and substantive. The group of methodological limitations includes the use of relatively small samples, variation in the sensitivity of the technique in different thematic areas and times, and occasionally low letter return rates. Content limitations are a set of social problems that create a resonance in the public space.