Is this single question CBC design faulty?

Question

Say I have a single CBC question that is designed as a random task with 2 concepts in the task. For example, concept 1 is McDonalds and concept 2 is Burger King. There are 4 attributes with 2 levels each. Say I set the prohibitions so that I essentially have two separate lists of levels(A and B). Because the design is a random task, will concept 1 be listed with A sometimes and B at other times? The excel sheet data file will show either a 1 or 2 but I'm wondering if that even means anything since it's not a fixed task. When I do file>Print Study, the column titles show up with the appropriate lists so I'm not quite sure the set up is okay or not.

Answer 1

Please be careful!  If I'm understanding you correctly, you are thinking about using the concept labels (the labels above the concept) to type McDonalds for the left concept and Burger King for the right concept.  We have stern warnings in our software to not put anything in the concept labels that would make a meaningful difference to respondents (you should always use nondescript phrases such as "Concept A" and "Concept B").  That's because we do not estimate alternative specific constants representing the position in the questionnaire.

If you want an alternative-specific design (list of attributes for McDonald's and a different list of attributes for Burger King) then your first attribute should be the restaurant name with levels "McDonald's" and "Burger King".  Then, you specify the attributes in the list both for McDonald's and for Burger King, specify the prohibitions to make it happen, and make sure to click the box in the software that tells the designer that this is an alternative-specific design.