The authors consider how to construct summary indices (e.g., quality-of-life [QOL] indices) for a social unit that will be endorsed by a majority of its citizens. They assume that many social indicators are available to describe the social unit, but individuals disagree about the relative...

Author's reply to comments by Johnson (Johnson, R. M. 1986. Commentary. 322.) and Greenberg (Greenberg, M. G. 1986. Commentary. 320–321.) about this paper (Hagerty, M. R. 1986. The cost of simplifying preference models. 298–319.).

A model of information search is proposed which assumes that a consumer chooses the next piece of information so as to maximize his expected value of sample information. The cost of processing, the perceived correlation between attributes, and the perceived importance of attributes would all...

Formulas are derived which estimate the accuracy of conjoint analysis in predicting preferences in a validation sample. This accuracy turns out to depend on (among other things) which is used (e.g., whether interactions are added, whether partworth or linear functions are used). I first show a...