Modify the BYO section in ACBC

Question

Dear community,

I was thinking of changing the way the BYO section is designed. Is it possible to split it into multiple screens as per concept below?

Screen 1: Description of attribute 1 and its levels, and radio buttons for level selection
Screen 2: analogous with attribute 2
...
Screen n: analogous with attribute n

The idea is that the respondents won't be overburdened with a long attribute/level description page before starting the actual BYO task, but rather do every attribute step by step. This way they don't have to remember the definitions of the attributes/levels.

What do you think from a methodological point of view?

On another note: https://legacy.sawtoothsoftware.com/forum/5063/possible-grey-attributes-which-identical-screenig-section
--> I was wondering whether Bryan's comment still holds true based on current knowledge and experience?

Thank you so much.

Comments

I'll save the methodological components for brighter minds than myself, but I may be able to help with the technical parts.  Splitting the BYO to actually be on different pages would be tricky, but some custom code in the BYO page could make it look like it was on different pages.  Perhaps a fake "Next" button could be used to control which part of the BYO is being displayed at a given moment.

One worry about doing this would be if your attributes were linked in any way.  Prohibitions would be an example of this.  When all the attributes are visible at the same time, a respondent can easily change their input to fix a prohibited selection.  With only one attribute visible at a given time, a respondent may be unsure how to fix their invalid input.  Do you have anything like that in your ACBC?

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Hi Zachary!

Thanks a lot for your reply. I do not have any prohibitions in my study.

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Do you have any suggestion on how to customize breaking the BYO into multiple steps?

The problem is I have a description page for the 7-8 attributes before the BYO page and I'm afraid people would forget what they read before (definitions are as short as possible, but still somes up when having so many attributes)

Answer 1

If you are using a summed Price attribute, then breaking the BYO question across multiple pages wouldn't be a good thing to do from a methodological standpoint.  But, if you are not doing Summed Price, then breaking the BYO question across multiple screens seems to me that it could be OK.  But, there's the issue of whether you should randomize the presentation order...otherwise there could be biasing order effects.

Comments

Dear Bryan,

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts!
My study does not involve price attributes though.

Regarding randomization: If we keep it original (BYO in one screen), would you recommend to randomize order of the attributes too?

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So much depends on whether there is a natural order that the product is typically described in for the real world or not.  There can be order effects in conjoint analysis, so if there isn't a natural order that is found in the real world, conjoint analysts often like to randomize all or portions of the attribute list.