Measuring affective responses for human-oriented product design using the Rasch model

Contrasting adjectives have been a common approach for measuring affective responses to products and to design elements, but this approach has often introduced various sources of inaccuracy. Such inaccuracies yield non-linear scales and their statistical procedures can present shortcomings. A different approach is to use the Rasch model. The application of the Rasch model as a measurement approach for affective responses to design features is novel. Thus, this research aimed to determine whether data from affective responses to some products fit the model. A diverse group of participants assessed the specialness of four pieces of wrapped confectionery. A pool of items from a prior study in the UK division of an international confectionery company was used and the responses were analysed using the model. The outcomes indicated that the application of the Rasch model might overcome some of the limitations of using contrasting adjective pairs to elicit consumers’ affective responses.