IDENTIFYING TRUE DIFFERENCES ACROSS COUNTRIES WHILE MAXIMIZING DATA QUALITY

1. www.answersresearch.com 380 Stevens Avenue, #214 Solana Beach, CA 92075 858-792-4660 IDENTIFYING TRUE DIFFERENCES ACROSS COUNTRIES WHILE MAXIMIZING DATA QUALITY

2. Approaches Available Today • Likert Scales • Respondents rate each item on a 5, 7, or 9-point scale. • Constant Sum • Respondents divide a given sum (usually100) among two or more items. • Ranking • Respondents rank the items in order. • Max-Diff • Respondents are shown subsets of the items and asked to specify best/worst for each set. Answers Research 2008

3. Pros And Cons Of Each Approach Likert Scales Constant Sum • Pros • Easily administered • Easily understood by respondents • Cons • Heavily influenced by scale use bias • Difficult to discern true differences between countries • Pros • Forces trade-offs • Avoids yea-saying • Cons • Difficult to administer if there are more than 5 items • Programming does not work on all browsers if done by web Answers Research 2008

4. Pros And Cons Of Each Approach Cont’d Ranking *Max-Diff • Pros • Each point is used only once • Easily understood by respondents • Cons • Influenced by order bias • Does not allow ties • Pros • No scale use or order bias • Provides better discrimination among items • Cons • Data is relative not absolute • Takes slightly longer to implement *Max-Diff is the preferred approach when looking for differences across countries and when relative difference is important. Answers Research 2008

5. How Max-Diff Works • Step 1: Identify the items you want to test. Item A Item B Item C Item D Item E Item F Item G Item H Item I Item J Item K Item L Answers Research 2008

6. How Max-Diff Works • Step 2: Put items into pre-defined tasks of 4. In this case we are testing12 items. To complete the exercise respondents will need to complete 9 of these tasks. Tasks 1-9 ○ Item C ○ ○ Item F ○ ○ Item A ○ ○ Item H ○ Answers Research 2008

7. How Max-Diff Works • Step 3: For each task respondents are asked to select the least important and most important item. Answers Research 2008

8. What Did We Learn? A>C A>F A>H C>F H>F Answers Research 2008

9. Typical Output Less Important More Important Answers Research 2008

10. Recent Study Results from the Max-Diff exercise are much cleaner compared to traditional Likert scale data. Distinct tiers Little differentiation Answers Research 2008

11. Recent Study Cont’d Clear priorities emerge from the Max-Diff scores that would be missed analyzing mean scores. Little differentiation Story differs by Country Answers Research 2008

12. Ability To See Patterns Within Groups Roughly all US respondents feel Reliability is important. Less Important More Important Answers Research 2008

13. Ability To See Patterns Within Groups Unlike the US, UK respondents are divided on whether Reliability is important. Less Important More Important Answers Research 2008

14. Ability To See Patterns Within Groups While Trust is seen as the most important item in Japan, we also see it is not the consensus. Less Important More Important Answers Research 2008

15. Questions Ron Weidemann Answers Research, LLC rweidemann@answersresearch.com 858-792-4660 x221 www.AnswersResearch.com Answers Research 2008