MDS: the Analysis

  • MDS scores are calculated for each respondent (individual level analysis) based on the choices across the scenarios;
  • analysis is done either via count estimation or hierarchical Bayes (HB) estimation, with the latter being the most popular method due to its robustness;
  • MDS scores are then presented, usually on a bar chart, as percentages on a scale 0:100%.

The function MDS.create.list available in R-sw Tradeoff prepares the structure for individual analysis of MDS data, which is done by either MDS.count.analysis + MDS.counts.extract (count estimation) or estimate.MDS.HB (HB estimation).