[EM] Summary of psych/market-research studies of rating scales

[Richard Fobes]

While reading the information about score ballots, I wondered what the 
range-voting advocate's response is to the belief that a big preference 
gap in one ballot will have more influence than a smaller preference gap 
in another ballot.

For example, suppose one voter votes:

A = 1
B = 2
C = 10

and another voter votes:

A = 1
B = 5
C = 10

and, combined with the other ballots, the winner is C.

Now, suppose the first voter changes hisher ballot to:

A = 1
B = 5
C = 10

and now B wins.

This implies that the big gap between B and C in the first ballot has 
more influence than the smaller gap between B and C in the second ballot.

How do range voting advocates resolve this apparent unfairness?

I'm asking out of curiosity.

("Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought him back.")

Richard Fobes


On 6/3/2013 9:25 AM, Warren D Smith wrote:
>      http://rangevoting.org/RateScaleResearch.html
>
> is a new webpage attempting to summarize about 100 years and 100 papers
> worth of research on humans trying to use "rating scales" ,
> focusing on what we can learn about
> how "score voting" (also called "range voting") should be conducted.
>
> An older page, which knew comparatively little about this
> that kind of research, was
>
>     http://RangeVoting.org/Why99.html
>
> and the two pages will need to be reconciled.