Patent ID: 8121886

Claim:
A method for conducting a computer-implemented survey to collect survey information relating to a plurality of items from a survey participant by the display of information relating to a selected subset of a set of items in the survey to a survey participant via a survey user interface generated by a computer, the selected subset of items selected as a function of the number of times that particular items have been previously shown to other survey participants in one or more prior surveys, comprising the computer-implemented steps of: storing information regarding the set of items in a memory, the stored information including (a) display information about each of the plurality of items in the set of items for presentation to a survey participant and (b) presentation number information corresponding to the number of times that each particular item in the set of items has been previously shown to survey participants in one or more prior surveys; selecting a subset of items from the set of items for presenting to a survey participant in accordance with a predetermined selection algorithm that utilizes the presentation number information to select items that are in need of additional data to improve a confidence factor relative to other items in the set of items; presenting the display information corresponding to the selected subset of items to the survey participant via the survey user interface; and receiving rating information input by the survey participant via the survey user interface indicating the survey participant's preferences as to items in the selected subset of items presented.