The MaxDiff Analyzer supports files exported from CBC/HB version 4.4.4 and later. The file formats generated by CBC/HB changed with the release of version 5.0.0. These file formats are similar to the one generated by Lighthouse Studio in that they have a header row followed by one row for each respondent.
Scores generated by CBC/HB are different from those generated by Lighthouse Studio in that the last item is dropped during estimation. In actuality, it has a value of zero and acts as a reference item. Therefore, when you upload a CBC/HB file into MaxDiff Analyzer it will ask you to provide a label for this last item as it is not in the file.
CBC/HB version 4.4.4 - 4.6.x creates a file with four columns before the item columns. They are “Respondent”, “RLH”, “Merged Variables”, and “Parameters”. The column headers for these columns must be these exact labels. That is how the MaxDiff Analyzer determines which version of file is being uploaded. If the column headers for these first four columns are not exactly as described above, then you will get an error message when uploading the file stating that the file does not appear to be a CBC/HB file. MaxDiff Analyzer will use the “Respondent” column as the unique respondent identifier and will ignore the other three columns (“RLH”, “Merged Variables”, and “Parameters”) but they must be present in the file as placeholders. If I had used CBC/HB to generate scores for the color project described above then the resulting file would look something like this:
Respondent, RLH, Merged Variables, Parameters, "Red", "Green"
10, 545, 0, 4, 2.166, -1.503
11, 424, 0, 4, 0.793, -3.460
12, 480, 0, 4, -1.171, -4.870
When CBC/HB version 5.0.0 was released the “Merged Variables” and “Parameters” columns were omitted from the file. Therefore, using CBC/HB 5.0.0 or later for the color project would produce a file like this:
Respondent, RLH, "Red", "Green"
10, 540, 2.110079, -1.836098
11, 435, 0.839092, -4.250764
12, 479, -0.872493, -4.508262