Comparative Judgement Methods

Professor Ian Jones is the head of the Department of Mathematics Education at Loughborough University and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. From November 2023 to September 2024, he ran a series of events exploring the application and potential of comparative judgement methods across academic disciplines with the help of NCRM.

The innovation forum kicked off with an online pre-event at NCRM’s Research Methods e-Festival on 7 November 2023. The central event, a conference held on 16 January 2024 at Loughborough University, explored the applications of comparative judgement methods, priorities for research in this area and the construction of a methodological special interest group dedicated to this topic.

The event was hosted alongside Dr Marie-Josée Bisson, a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at De Montfort University, and Dr Rowland Seymour, an Assistant Professor in Statistics at the University of Birmingham.

Follow-up events were held on 20 September 2024 at De Monfort University and 17 January 2025 at the University of Birmingham, funded by UK Research and Innovation and the London Mathematical Society. The event was open to participation and featured short talks by delegates about studies they were conducting or intending to conduct using comparative judgement.

Outputs

The forum resulted in the following outputs:

• Establishment of the Comparative Judgement Methods Methodological Special Interest Group (MSIG): A new group was established to foster collaboration and innovation in the use of comparative judgement methods across disciplines. The group’s activity continues into 2025 with further events planned. For further information, please contact Professor Ian Jones at: i.jones@lboro.ac.uk.
• GitHub Repository: A repository was created to host open-access data, tutorials and resources for researchers. Access the repository