Provides new tools of special relevance if you are a:
who is interested in the analysis of survey data on attitudes and choice preferences, intentions or behaviour.
Facilitates appreciation amongst practitioners, researchers and students, of inter-option relationships, option advantage, disadvantage, and share of choice, under current and changing conditions.
Specifically designed for analysing the attractiveness of options and choices within target groups.
Focuses on status of both:
Shows that the addition of appeal to choice data may lead to strikingly different interpretations, and, where relevant, recommendations for action.
Adds a 21st Century dimension to 20th Century polling methods – bringing depth to "head count" polls revealing the character and scale of differences in appeal between options.
Enables description, projection, and simulation of appeal, inter-option advantage and disadvantage, and share of choice outcomes.
Provides an appreciation of both:
shares of choice might change, or be changed.
Covers evaluation of options ranging from laws or policies, products and services, product and service attributes, practices, organisations, personalities or candidates, to personal and social behaviour.
Applies equally to client groups and customers, voters, interest groups, user groups, stakeholders, organisational members, the general public, or any other group or subgroup.
Supports a wide range of research functions from status reports for tracking, monitoring and scoping, to comprehensive analysis of options and possible option variants through in-depth research.
Data demands for each research function are very modest. Each option to be covered requires a single measure of appeal. In-depth elements can even be included in the most limited study e.g. proposed service change could be evaluated through monitoring research with the addition of a single question.
Common major limitations of analytical tools are avoided:
Collects measures of option attractiveness, calculates differences in attractiveness between options, and infers choice selection for individuals.
Shows amount of change in appeal needed to change each individual's choice.
Provides aggregate data on option appeal, aggregate appeal differences between options, and inferred shares of choice.
Shows general standing of each option's appeal, appeal advantage and disadvantage, and inferred share of choice.
Uses appeal distribution parameters to describe character and scale of inter-option advantages and disadvantages and their impacts on shares of choice.
Uses selection set composition to evaluate the scale of impacts of target options on remaining options in terms of appeal advantage, disadvantage, and share of choice.
Requires only one measure of appeal for each option or variant.
Enables more sensitive detection of change through superior precision using continuous scales. (May be used to reduce required sample size or improve analytical power, as well as earlier detection of change.)
Facilitates greater willingness of respondents to provide the relevant data i.e. appeal evaluations rather than "forced" choices. (This reduces or eliminates "can't say". Enables choice and share inference for "non-committed" as well as "committed".)
Validation testing of methods can be built-in as a routine analysis component.
Enables simulation and evaluation of past or future, actual or possible changes in appeal and assesses impacts on advantage, disadvantage and shares of choice.
Enables identification of aspects most likely to generate changes in share of choice, including areas which may generate disproportionate or even dramatic change.
Also enables identification of aspects most unlikely to generate changes in share of choice or changes in levels of option commitment.
Can reveal the contributions of specific options in influencing advantage, disadvantage and choice outcomes within a set of options.
Accommodates generation of all possible trends in share of choice - from static to linear through chaotic to catastrophic.
Enables projection of option shares based on trends in option appeal parameters (rather than trends in gross shares) leading to results which may be counter-intuitive but much more reliable.
Facilitates exploration of points of sensitivity, resistance, leverage, etc., in considering prospects for or likelihood of change.
Encourages organically oriented problem-solving in considering prospective attribute change in relation to option and selection set effects.
Fosters creative solutions in constructing or changing options as opportunities are detected or revealed rather than "mechanical" or "reflexive" responses.
Enhances management capabilities through improving knowledge of input factor relationships to output goals in an economical but focused manner.
Provides a strategic appreciation of options in the context of relevant selection sets.
Enables farsighted anticipation of counter-intuitive change through more precise measurement and simulation of non-linear relationships between appeal and share of choice.
The current version, which is freeware, handles up to 30 options in a single analysis.
As an Add-in for Excel 97 or later versions, all the extra Excel facilities are available in a package which is widely used and well understood.
Filtering of option selection sets and sample sub-groups is supported. (Classification data can be associated with appeal data to enable filtering and the analysis of results. More than 200 classification variables can be included in addition to appeal data.)
Multiple types of Options Analysis can be completed in a single run.
The intensive data analysis is automatically handled in background mode while you can continue with other work on the same computer.
MaceTech Options Analysis comes with a tutorial and help guide, context sensitive help plus free e-mail software support. Example analyses and other supporting material are part of the download package.