All current measures contingent valuation, standard gambles, direct ratings, time tradeoffs, person tradeoffs, and multi-attribute judgments have been criticized for being internally inconsistent, insensitive to relevant factors, or sensitive to irrelevant factors. In utility measurement tasks, subjects judge the utility of objects relative to some zero value. For example, subjects may judge the disutility of losing a finger or a hand relative to the zero point of losing nothing. In some judgments, subjects produce the object rather than the relative judgment.
Judgments can be indirect in terms of hypothetical decisions such as buying or gambling.
Direct judgments avoid many of these problems, but they raise other problems, in particular, those concerned with the scaling of utility. Our current research is directed at solutions to these problems of direct judgment, as well as continued investigation of the distorting effects of indirect methods. One type of solution involves the use of tasks designed to minimize scaling distortions, plus consistency checks and the opportunity to revise initial judgments. For example, the problem of inconsistent proportions may be avoided by using neither finger nor hand as the standard and asking for utility judgments of both simultaneously. We find that most subjects can correct their judgments based on such criteria without feeling that their judgments are no longer honest representations of their views.