Combine and conquer: A joint application of conjoint and functional approaches to the problem of risk measurement

Studied subjective risk by asking 10 undergraduates to rate the riskiness of 2 sets of gambles. Both sets allowed independent assessment of the effect of a gamble's expected payoff (mean), its skewness, and its scalefactor. Results of functional and polynomial conjoint measurement techniques show that all 3 variables had significant mean effects. For 6 of 18 data sets analyzed, a combination rule that was multiplicative for the variables mean and skewness and additive for scale could be fit. Six additional data sets could be fit by a combination rule multiplicative in all 3 factors. In the remaining 6 data sets simple independence was violated for skewness and/or scale, indicating that more complex combinations of these variables than were considered might have been applied. It is suggested that conjoint and functional techniques should be used in a complementary way. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).