PREFERENCES MEASUREMENT IN EDUCATION USING CONJOINT ANALYSIS

In the last years we have witnessed a remarkable variety of fields where conjoint analysis was applied even if it is known as a marketing research method used for measuring consumer preferences. Education is one of these fields; conjoint analysis was employed to investigate students’ preferences for universities or teaching. Conjoint analysis is a quantitative tool which offers the framework for understanding decision making when different alternatives described by multiple attributes are available. This paper reviews the studies developed in the field of education which are based on conjoint analysis and also identifies other issues related to educational process which could be investigated by this means. In Romania, there are no previous studies developed to investigate students or teachers preferences by conjoint analysis. Hence the research undertaken in this paper is focusing on the specificity of the Romanian educational system and on adapting conjoint analysis in order to examine the most important factors that influence students' preferences for different teaching methods.