Methodological Aspects of Measuring Preferences Using the Rank and Thurstone Scale

Anotace: The fundamental problem with the measurement of preferences is that it not only attempts to measure something that is, by its nature, “unmeasurable”, but also hidden from a direct observation. In addition, a person’s current emotional, material and social situation influences the measurement of preferences resulting from the person’s system of values. The paper is a study on the methodology of preference measurement, a comparison and evaluation of two methods of scale construction. Among various techniques we investigate the two methods: Thurstone procedure for finding scale separations developed by Thurstone and the simplest rank method of scaling. This study examines the relative merits of Thurstone and rank techniques of scale construction.