Subjective preferences towards various conditions of self-administered questionnaires: AHP and conjoint analyses

Abstract

Using questionnaires for eliciting data from respondents has a long term history. The present paper focuses on subjects’ preferences towards specific self-administered questionnaire designs and circumstances in which these experiments are carried out. The paper examines three factors, that is, the assistant presence (yes, no), survey form (paper or electronic), and scale type (visual analogue or Likert). A pairwise comparison technique was employed to obtain participants’ opinions. Calculations of the relative preferences were performed according to the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology. The conjoint methodology employed in this study provided partial utilities of the examined factor levels and relative importances for the effects. Apart from verifying the statistical significance of the investigated factors, the analysis of variance revealed also possible interactions between them.