Conservationists need to measure human behaviour to guide decisions and evaluate their impact. However, activities can be misreported and reporting accuracy might change following conservation interventions, making it hard to verify any apparent changes. Techniques for asking sensitive questions are increasingly integrated into survey designs to improve data quality but some can be costly or hard for non-experts to implement. We demonstrate a straightforward, low-cost approach, the "bean method" in which respondents give anonymous answers by adding a coloured bean to a jar to denote a yes or no response. We apply the bean method to measure wildmeat hunting and trading over two years at a conservation project site in Gola Forest, Liberia, and extend the technique to accommodate questions about hunting frequency. We compare responses given using the bean method and direct questions, for groups that did and did not participate in conservation interventions. Results from the bean method corresponded to those from direct reports, giving no indication of change in question sensitivity following conservation interventions. Estimates from both methods indicate that wildmeat trading decreased in project and non-project households (from 36% to 20%), while hunting decreased in one project group (38% to 28%). Where inconsistent answers were given (2 to 6% of respondents), differences were in both directions and were most likely attributable to measurement error. The bean method was quick and straightforward to administer in a low-literacy setting. We show it can be modified for answers of more than two categories and consider it a valuable tool that could be adapted for a wide range of conservation settings. Article impact statement: Based on a simple voting system, the bean method is a practical, low-cost way to obtain anonymous answers about sensitive topics. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

中文翻译：

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bean 方法作为衡量敏感行为的工具

环保主义者需要衡量人类行为以指导决策并评估其影响。然而，活动可能会被误报，报告的准确性可能会在保护干预后发生变化，从而很难验证任何明显的变化。提出敏感问题的技术越来越多地集成到调查设计中，以提高数据质量，但有些技术可能成本高昂或非专家难以实施。我们展示了一种简单、低成本的方法，即“豆子法”，在这种方法中，受访者通过在罐子中添加一个有色豆子来表示是或否的回答来给出匿名答案。我们在利比里亚戈拉森林的一个保护项目地点应用豆子法来衡量两年来的野生肉狩猎和交易，并扩展该技术以适应有关狩猎频率的问题。对于参与和未参与保护干预的群体，我们比较了使用 bean 方法和直接问题给出的回答。bean 方法的结果与直接报告的结果一致，没有表明保护干预后问题敏感性发生变化。两种方法的估计表明，项目和非项目家庭的野肉交易减少（从 36% 到 20%），而一个项目组的狩猎减少（38% 到 28%）。如果给出的答案不一致（占受访者的 2% 至 6%），则存在两个方向的差异，并且最有可能归因于测量误差。bean 方法在识字率低的环境中可以快速而直接地进行管理。我们表明它可以针对两个以上类别的答案进行修改，并认为它是一种有价值的工具，可以适用于广泛的保护环境。文章影响陈述：基于简单的投票系统，bean方法是一种实用、低成本的方式来获取敏感话题的匿名答案。本文受版权保护。版权所有。