Paired comparisons: consistency check

[Marcel Trawio]

Hello,

is there a method to check consistency in the judgments made in a paired
comparison test? The problem is that no preferences but similarities of
the presented pairs were judged.

My idea is to repeat some pairs randomly and check if approximately
equal judgments were made by the subject. But the number of the
repetitons is very low due to the fact that lots of pairs have to be
judged, so it isn't that significant...

I appreciate any suggestions and thank you in advance.

Regards,
Marcel



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[Marcel Trawio]

Of course not. Only a chemist is curious
about such a thing, and he is curious about it only because chemistry
is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the
appropriate classification of a new species of beetle? No. That
question is of interest only to the entomologist, and he is interested
in it only because entomology is his surrogate activity. If the
chemist and the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to
obtain the physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their
abilities in an interesting way but in some nonscientific pursuit,
then they couldn't giver a damn about isopropyltrimethylmethane or the
classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for postgraduate
education had led the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of
a chemist. In that case he would have been very interested in
insurance matters but would have cared nothing about
isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not normal to put into
the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that
scientists put into their work. The "curiosity" explanation for the
scientists' motive just doesn't stand up.

88. The "benefit of humanity" explanation doesn't work any better.