Patent ID: 7191144

Claim:
A method for creating an estimate of a respondent's rank order preferences for at least a portion of a set of N stimuli where N is a positive integer equal to R multiplied by S, the method comprising: A) presenting to a respondent a subset of R stimuli selected from the set of N stimuli; B) receiving from the respondent, a set of rank order preferences for the presented subset of R stimuli; C) repeating A and B until all N stimuli have been presented in S subsets of R stimuli and S sets of rank order preferences have been received for the sets of R stimuli; D) presenting a set H comprised of the highest ranked stimuli from each of the previously presented S subsets; E) receiving from the respondent, a set of rank order preferences for the presented set of stimuli in set H; F) associating each of the rank order preferences for the presented set of stimuli from set H with a value representative of an estimated overall rank order preference for a stimuli receiving a particular ranking in set H for a set of N stimuli presented in S subsets of R stimuli; G) presenting a set T comprised of the third highest ranked stimuli from each of the previously presented S subsets; H) receiving from the respondent, a set of rank order preferences for the presented set of stimuli in set T; I) associating each of the rank order preferences for the presented set of stimuli from set T with a value representative of an estimated overall rank order preference for a stimuli receiving a particular ranking in set T for a set of N stimuli presented in S subsets of R stimuli; J) using the values associated in steps F and I with the highest and third highest ranked values of each of the original subsets to estimate the overall rank order preference for any stimuli originally ranked second highest in each of the S subsets for second ranked stimuli lacking an estimated overall rank order preference; and K) outputting the respondent's estimated overall rank order preferences for at least a portion of the set of N stimuli.