MULTIVARIATE PAIRED COMPARISONS: THE EXTENSION OF A UNIVARIATE MODEL AND ASSOCIATED ESTIMATION AND TEST PROCEDURES

The study is concerned with the development of an extension of the Bradley-Terry Model for paired comparisons to situations in which responses to paired comparisons are obtained on each of several characteristics. At the outset a probability model for multivariate paired comparisons is proposed that may be represented in several distinct ways. An iterative procedure for obtaining maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters introduced into the model is given and its behavior examined in some detail. It is observed that the procedure generally performed well, the key to this conclusion being the relative stability of the initial estimates of the preference parameters. Report on The Development of Statistical Methods for Quality Control and Surveillance Testing.