Business

Mathematics

Satisficing

Gene

Statistics

Epistemology

Marketing

Philosophy

Survey research

Econometrics

Artificial intelligence

Psychology

Economics

Choice set

Set (abstract data type)

Chemistry

Programming language

Conjoint analysis

Quality (philosophy)

Computer science

Management science

Preference

Applied psychology

Biochemistry

Robustness (evolution)

Political Analysis

In recent years, political and social scientists have made increasing use of conjoint survey designs to study decision-making. Here, we study a consequential question which researchers confront when implementing conjoint designs: How many choice tasks can respondents perform before survey satisficing degrades response quality? To answer the question, we run a set of experiments where respondents are asked to complete as many as 30 conjoint tasks. Experiments conducted through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and Survey Sampling International demonstrate the surprising robustness of conjoint designs, as there are detectable but quite limited increases in survey satisficing as the number of tasks increases. Our evidence suggests that in similar study contexts researchers can assign dozens of tasks without substantial declines in response quality.

The Number of Choice Tasks and Survey Satisficing in Conjoint Experiments