what is maxdiff?

[Guest]

Does anyone know what maxdiff refers to or how I would do it?

Thanks!

 

[Myrna Larson]

Where did you encounter this term? In a worksheet formula? If so, it must
refer to a custom function written in VBA.

 

[Guest]

Perhaps =MAX(A1:A10)-MIN(A1:A10)?
It's already been pointed out that there is no maxdiff function built in to
Excel.

 

[Guest]

A client at work asked us to show (a) MaxDiff with our survey results (we
have written 3 surveys for them). I havent been able to get in touch with
them, and one of my coworkers thought it was an excel function, so Im trying
to find out what they meant by it. Any insight you can offer would be
greatly appreciated!

 

[Myrna Larson]

The only insight I can give you is to ask your client what he means by this.

 

[Guest]

A client at work asked us to show (a) MaxDiff with our survey results (we
have written 3 surveys for them). I havent been able to get in touch with
them, and one of my coworkers thought it was an excel function, so Im trying
to find out what they meant by it. Any insight you can offer would be
greatly appreciated!

You really should learn how to use google search. I suspect this is what
your client is asking about. Quoting from one google "hit" ....

"Maximum Difference Scaling is ideally suited for this task

Instead of asking respondents to directly rate or rank their preferences
for these flavors, we used a MaxDiff approach*

Each respondent was shown 10 sets of four flavors

For each set, we asked them to pick the flavor they like best of the four,
and the flavor they like least

From these responses, we can derive their preferences for all 12 of the
flavors

* Traditional rating scale and ranking questions often fail to produce
useful results. Problems include halo effects, skewed distributions (limited
usage of the full scale range), many ties among items, and response style
biases (some respondents refuse to give top box ratings, while others only
use the top 3 boxes). Maximum Difference Scaling is a relatively new
approach that overcomes these pitfalls, producing true derived
interval-scaled data."

For a more formal explanation, see
http://www.sdr-consulting.com/article19.html .

 

[Myrna Larson]

Hmmm... If MaxDiff is what you have found, then I'm surprised that the OP
didn't know about it. Sounds like a common (but perhaps new) method in market
research, which he says is his field. Curious situation...

 

[joeu2004]

Hmmm... If MaxDiff is what you have found, then
I'm surprised that the OP didn't know about it.
Sounds like a common (but perhaps new) method in market
research, which he says is his field. Curious situation...

I share the observation. I had to bite my tongue (fingers?)
to keep from commenting on that fact myself. (Biting my
tongue again to keep from saying more ;->.)

 

[Myrna Larson]

<g>

I share the observation. I had to bite my tongue (fingers?)
to keep from commenting on that fact myself. (Biting my
tongue again to keep from saying more ;->.)