Psychographic filtering is located within a branch of

collaborative filtering Collaborative filtering (CF) is a technique used by recommender systems.Francesco Ricci and Lior Rokach and Bracha ShapiraIntroduction to Recommender Systems Handbook Recommender Systems Handbook, Springer, 2011, pp. 1-35 Collaborative filtering ...

(user-based) which anticipates

preferences In psychology, economics and philosophy, preference is a technical term usually used in relation to choosing between wikt:alternative, alternatives. For example, someone prefers A over B if they would rather choose A than B. Preferences are centra ...

based upon information received from a statistical survey, a

questionnaire A questionnaire is a research instrument that consists of a set of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents through survey or statistical study. A research questionnaire is typically a mix of ...

, or other forms of

social research Social research is a research conducted by social scientists following a systematic plan. Social research methodologies can be classified as quantitative and qualitative. * Quantitative designs approach social phenomena through quantifiable ...

.Haag et al., Management Information Systems: For the Information Age. Canada: McGraw Hill-Ryerson, 2006 The term ''Psychographic'' is derived from Psychography which is the study of associating and classifying people according to their psychological characteristics. (2006) Answers
/ref> In

marketing Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to empha ...

or social research, information received from a participant’s response is compared with other participants’ responses and the comparison of that research is designed to predict preferences based upon similarities or differences in perception.Sonja Kangas, Collaborative Filtering and Recommendation Systems lectronic resourceFinland: VTT Information Technology, 200

/ref> The participant should be inclined to share perceptions with people who have similar preferences. Suggestions are then provided to the participant based on their predicted preferences. Psychographic filtering differs from collaborative filtering in that it classifies similar people into a specific psychographic profile where predictions of preferences are based upon that psychographic profile type. Examples of psychological characteristics which determine a psychographic profile are personality, lifestyle (sociology), lifestyle,

value system In ethics and social sciences, value denotes the degree of importance of something or action, with the aim of determining which actions are best to do or what way is best to live ( normative ethics in ethics), or to describe the significance of d ...

behavior Behavior (American English) or behaviour ( British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as w ...

experience Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience invol ...

and

attitude Attitude may refer to: Philosophy and psychology * Attitude (psychology), an individual's predisposed state of mind regarding a value * Metaphysics of presence * Propositional attitude, a relational mental state connecting a person to a prop ...

Method

Research data is collected and analyzed through

quantitative methods Quantitative research is a research strategy that focuses on quantifying the collection and analysis of data. It is formed from a deductive approach where emphasis is placed on the testing of theory, shaped by empiricist and positivist philoso ...

, yet the manner in which the questions are presented share similarities used within

qualitative method Qualitative research is a type of research that aims to gather and analyse non-numerical (descriptive) data in order to gain an understanding of individuals' social reality, including understanding their attitudes, beliefs, and motivation. This ...

s. Participants respond to questions offering perceived choice. The participants’ choice is reflective of their psychological characteristics. This perceived choice (presented throughout the research method) is designed to score a participant and categorize that participant according to their respective score. The categories (psychographic profiles) used to assign people, reflect personality characteristics which the researchers can analyze and use for their particular purposes.

Application

Psychographic filtering and collaborative filtering are still within experimental stages and therefore have been not been extensively used. The techniques are most effective when they are used to indicate preference for a single, constant item (i.e. a horror book written by one author) rather than recommending a composition of characteristics (i.e. a newspaper article on war) which varies in perspective from publisher to publisher. For the item to be perceived in accordance with the psychographic profile, it must be defined within a specific category, opposed to being encompassing of many categories (where many preferences overlap). Major problems with this type of research are whether it can be applied to items which are constantly changing in scope and updated regularly and whether people will participate sufficiently to create psychographic profiles.

References

{{Reflist Collaboration

Method

Application

See also

References