Comparison of Usability Preferences with Bivariate Ordinal Regression
Suppose \(n\) respondents are asked to rate several alternatives on a scale from, say, 1 to 5, with 1 being least preferred and 5 being most preferred. How can we determine whether one alternative is significantly more preferred to the others? The data may include covariates which are associated with the preference of interest.
Elizabeth Nichols and I carry out this kind of analysis on map usability in a recent report (Raim and Nichols 2023). With ordinal data recorded in a survey setting, we compare preferences for satellite maps - which display details such as landmarks and terrain - to those of simplified road maps. We make use of a bivariate ordinal regression model to carry out the analysis. Computations are carried out using the mvord R package by Hirk, Hornik, and Vana (2020), which can also support multivariate models with more than two alternatives.