The Validity of Attribute-Importance Measurement : A Review

The many available methods to measure the importance of attributes in judgment and choice often lack convergent and nomological validity. A critical review of the literature confirms this lack of validity among the ten most common methods for measuring the importance of attributes in behavioral sciences. The authors argue that one of the key determinants of this lack of validity concerns the multidimensionality of attribute importance. Building on the notable work of Myers and Alpert (1968), they propose that different methods measure different dimensions of attribute importance and hypothesize what methods measure which specific dimensions. A re-examination of existing research reveals convergent and nomological validity among methods that are hypothesized to measure the same dimensions of attribute importance and discriminant validity between methods that are hypothesized to measure different dimensions of attribute importance. Acknowledging the multidimensionality of attribute importance reduces the lack of validity from 67.0% to 31.9% of the method comparisons identified by the authors. This research is a first step in identifying and developing methods that enable both practitioners and marketing scholars to improve the validity of attribute importance measurement