What is Constant Sum Measure?
Constant sum measure is a quantitative research technique used to evaluate the relative importance of a set of items. It is a type of survey question that is used to measure the relative importance of a set of items or characteristics by asking the respondent to allot a fixed amount of points to each of the items.
How Does Constant Sum Measure Work?
The respondents are asked to divide a given amount of points among the items being measured. The points may be divided equally or unequally, depending on the importance of the items. The total of all the points should always be equal to the given amount. This type of measure is often used to evaluate the relative importance of features, attributes, or services.
Advantages of Constant Sum Measure
- It is an easy to understand and simple to implement measure.
- It helps to measure the relative importance of features or services.
- It is an effective way to measure the importance of items.
- It can be used to compare the importance of different items.
- It allows the respondents to easily understand the importance of the items.
Disadvantages of Constant Sum Measure
- It is difficult to interpret the results as the points awarded to each item may not represent the true importance of the item.
- It is difficult to compare the responses between respondents as the points can be distributed differently.
- It is not suitable for measuring the importance of items that have complex relationships.
- It is not suitable for measuring the importance of items that have many different levels of importance.
Constant sum measure is a useful quantitative research technique for measuring the relative importance of a set of items. It is an easy to understand and simple to implement measure that helps to measure the relative importance of features or services. However, it has some drawbacks such as difficulty in interpreting the results and difficulty in comparing the responses between respondents.