Preferences research

Powerful insights into people’s preferences

Explore choices made by experts and stakeholders, evaluate their noisiness or variability and build expert systems for decision-making.

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Preferences research: 3 people looking at a dashboard of information.
  • AbacusBio
  • Dunedin City Council
  • WA Country Health Service
  • NZ Ministry for the Environment
  • IAVI

Preferences research tools

Engage with groups or sampled populations of up to 5000 to understand how people use their intuition and confront trade-offs when making choices.

Why use 1000minds?

1000minds’ preferences research tools are inclusive, user-friendly and scientifically valid, so you can gain valuable insights and be confident in your results.

  • Take charge Set up and run your preferences research without having to worry about complex design issues.
  • Maximize data quality Ensure participants’ responses are reliable, thanks to 1000minds’ award-winning technology.
  • Discover preferences Understand how people use their intuition and confront trade-offs when making decisions.
  • Synthesize judgments Compare and aggregate people’s preferences, ranging from experts to members of the public.
  • User-friendly Intuitive, beautiful interface, and advice from 1000minds if you need it.
  • Valid and reliable Trustworthy results from using 1000minds’ award-winning technology.
  • Real-time reporting Results are automatically available as people complete their surveys.
  • Easy integration Easy to combine with research survey panels and other survey tools.

User-friendly tools for understanding people’s preferences

  1. 1. Create Start with one of our examples, or build your own survey from scratch.
  2. 2. Customize Fine-tune and customize your survey by following a simple step-by-step process.
  3. 3. Run Include 1000s of survey participants, or have people work together in groups.
  4. 4. Results Understand and apply your results using a variety of graphical and analytical tools.

An inclusive group having a conversation.

Preferences surveys

Discover and quantify people’s preferences

Invite potentially 1000s of people to express their preferences by choosing between scenarios involving trade-offs.

  • Discover what matters to people when making trade-offs
  • Compare each person’s preferences and aggregate them
  • Apply these preferences to make decisions
  • Design government policies

Plant & animal breeding success story
HRQoL success story

A researcher with a magnifying glass and documents.

Discrete choice experiments (DCEs)

Set up and run DCEs easily

Easily run DCEs, also known as conjoint analysis surveys, to find out what matters to people when making choices.

  • Estimate people’s “utilities” or weights
  • Reveal similarities and differences in people’s preferences
  • Predict people’s choices based on these preferences
  • Estimate consumers’ “willingness to pay” (WTP)

Coastal erosion success story
Employee preferences success story

A noise-audit chart showing the variability between experts.

Noise auditing

Tune in to “noisy” expert judgments

Reveal the variability of the judgments of experts and other stakeholders.

  • Identify experts’ agreements and disagreements
  • Stimulate conversations to build consensus
  • Confirm the need for a better decision-making approach
  • Test assessment criteria and fine-tune them

“Noisy” expert judgments article
Organized-crime policing success story

People making a tradeoff choice.

Expert systems for decision-making and prioritization

Elicit and synthesize expert judgment

Create expert systems to support decision-making and prioritization, potentially for integration with other systems.

  • Help experts to develop expert systems from scratch
  • Test and validate your systems so they can be trusted
  • Integrate with other systems like a country’s health system
  • Get help and learn from the experience of the 1000minds team

Process for creating prioritization systems
ACR and EULAR success story

“1000minds provides an elegant, efficient and transparent way of reaching decisions about ‘wicked problems’ like sustainability that are contested by multiple ‘layers and players’ that all want their say.”

Dr Henrik Moller – Dr Henrik Moller

Questions & answers

Why use 1000minds for preferences research?

Three types of 1000minds survey are available for eliciting and analyzing people’s preferences: ranking, preferences and categorization surveys. They are very easy for anyone to set up, test and administer – and interpreting the results is straightforward.

All you need to do is enter your alternatives or the criteria you are considering, customize your survey’s “look and feel”, which can be in any language and include images, and then distribute it to your participants. As responses roll in, no extra analysis is required to derive your outputs. 1000minds does it all for you automatically!

1000minds is also very user-friendly for survey participants, which ensures better response rates and higher quality data than alternative approaches so that you can have confidence in your results.

1000minds is the only software in the world that combines the power of both decision-making and conjoint analysis in one beautiful package. 1000minds’ “secret spice” is the patented, award-winning PAPRIKA method, invented by company founders Franz Ombler and Paul Hansen. PAPRIKA is designed to be as cognitively simple and user-friendly for decision-makers as possible, so that you can have confidence in your results.

1000minds is highly regarded for its reliability and validity, being used for research and teaching at 710+ universities and other research organizations worldwide. 1000minds has also been extensively peer-reviewed in many arenas over the last two decades. 360+ articles or abstracts, many for healthcare applications, have been published since 2006. With a beautiful and user-friendly interface, it’s no wonder that 1000minds has been recognized in eight innovation awards and complimented as “a tool of great power and sheer elegance” (Consensus Software Award 2010, sponsored by IBM and Microsoft).

Most 1000minds surveys take about 10 minutes on average. However, how long a survey takes depends on how many attributes and levels you specify in your survey, and how many additional questions you include, e.g. about people’s socio-demographic characteristics.

1000minds has some smart features for limiting the number of questions people are asked without compromising the power of the analysis. For example, you can make some or all of the attributes optional so each survey participant can choose whether they are personally relevant for inclusion in their survey.

You can include up to 5000 people in a 1000minds survey. Read our guide summarizing common methods for finding 1000minds survey participants, ranging from emailing them to using a commercial survey panel. 1000minds integrates easily with survey panels, such as provided by global companies Cint and Dynata.

Yes, you can try 1000minds for free for 15 days. You can also book a free, personalized onboarding call to get you up and running as soon as possible.

It’s important to us that everyone who uses 1000minds feels they’re getting good value. Contact us to discuss an arrangement that’s proportional to your application and circumstances.

Your data is safe with us. Communications between your computer and 1000minds are always encrypted. Our data center provider meets a broad set of international and industry-specific compliance standards, such as ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2, as well as country-specific standards including Australia IRAP and UK G-Cloud. If requested, we can enter into a contractual agreement to guarantee the confidentiality of your information in 1000minds.

Free, step-by step video tutorials on how to use 1000minds are available in our resource center and on our YouTube channel. Our friendly support team is also available to assist you.

Got a different question? Ask us!