Subjective Evaluation of Sport Equipment - Deriving Preference Values from Pairwise Comparison Matrices (P162)

Design as well as usability of sport equipment is difficult to quantify by objective measurements. Subjective evaluations of different prototypes could be done by ranking the different alternatives in descending order. Discrimination of complex attributes such as design overburdens the testers. Designers routinely rank alternatives in a variety of settings using a staple of comparison, the pairwise comparison test (PCT). The advantage of this method is that it requires only a simple decision between two alternatives. The focus of this study is to use the PCT for the evaluation of sport equipment to establish this method in sports engineering. We also give insight regarding the procedural method, the underlying mathematical formulation as well as the interpretation of the results.