Comparison of rate-all-that-apply (RATA) and check-all-that-apply (CATA) questions across seven consumer studies

Rate-all-that-apply (RATA) questions are a variation of check-all-that-apply (CATA) questions in which consumers are asked to indicate whether terms from a list apply to describe a given product, and if they do so, to rate their intensity. RATA questions have been argued to provide more insights than CATA questions for sensory characterization with consumers. The present research is, to date, the most exhaustive comparison of CATA and RATA with regard to term usage, sample discrimination and sample configurations. A total of seven studies with 860 consumers were conducted with different product categories. A between-subjects design was used in all studies to compare the two methodologies. Confirming past studies, results from RATA and CATA were very similar. Minor differences between RATA and CATA were found, but were study and term specific and general superiority of one methodology over the other was not established, as opposed to what previous studies had suggested. Instead, results indicate that each method might have advantages over the other for certain product characteristics. A strong linear relationship was established between mean RATA scores and CATA term citation frequencies, demonstrating clearly that CATA questions differentiate among samples based on relative strength/weakness of sample characteristics. Collecting data as RATA but analysing them as CATA was inferior to the use of mean RATA scores, and is not recommended. The comparison of RATA data using mean scores and Dravnieks' scores showed no advantage of the latter and it is recommended that simple mean scores are used. Overall, results from the present work show that RATA is not necessarily an improvement over CATA questions and that for consumer research the decision to add an attribute intensity rating step depends on the aim of the study and the specific characteristics of the sample set.