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Gaining valid information about sensitive topics is an issue for survey research since its beginning. Over the years different methods have been developed and tested to encourage participants to respond in such surveys (avoiding unit nonresponse), to answer sensitive questions (avoiding item non-reponse) and to give honest answers (avoiding bias caused by false or socially desirable answers). Those methods include sampling strategies, framing and formulating items so that potentially problematic answers seem „normal“, enhancing the perceived privacy and also randomized response techniques that enable at least estimates for aggregates. However, as all those methods come with potential drawbacks, it seems reasonable to ascertain as precisely as possible in which cases such methods are really needed, i.e. which topics and items have to be considered sensitive. Besides classical examples such as sexual behavior, drugs, criminal and ethical problems and attitudes involving suicide and abortion, we also know from cross-national surveys that widely-used indicators such as income are highly sensitive and missing rates vary across countries. We also want to point out that people of various ethnic backgrounds, age groups or attitudinal characteristics may differ in what topics people consider sensitive. For this session, we particularly encourage submissions on findings about what topics are sensitive topics in which populations. We welcome studies using classical methods to detect sensitive questions and their impacts such as described above but we particularly aim for new concepts and new methods how to identify the sensitivity of questions among different societal or cultural groups.