Finding an efficient way to understand individual colour preference is important to researchers and designers. This article compares three research strategies to test individual colour preference including two research experimental environments (online and laboratory) and two research methods (multiple choice for N‐alternative‐forced‐choice and multiple choice for rank‐order). Three psychophysical experiments have been carried out. Participants were presented with six colour patches (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple) arranged in a random order on a computer display. In the first two experiments (Online experiment and Laboratory experiment I), participants were asked to indicate which colour square they prefer most; in the third experiment (Laboratory experiment II), participants were asked to rank their colour preferences of the six colour patches. The similarity between the results obtained from two experimental environments provides some validation for the online protocol and suggests that online experiments could be used more often. Pairwise comparisons for individual colour preference between genders and nationalities were carried out, and it was found that male and female responses were significantly different; but there was no statistical significance between Chinese and UK participants. The results from Monte Carlo simulations suggested that the rank‐order method should be preferred for individual colour preference studies involving small numbers of participants (especially less than 15 participants).

中文翻译：

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分析实验以确定个人的颜色偏好

寻找一种有效的方法来理解个人的颜色偏爱对研究人员和设计师很重要。本文比较了三种测试个人色彩偏好的研究策略，包括两种研究实验环境（在线和实验室）和两种研究方法（N替代强制选择的多项选择和等级排序的多项选择）。已经进行了三个心理物理实验。与会人员在计算机显示器上随机排列了六个色块（红色，橙色，黄色，绿色，蓝色和紫色）​​。在前两个实验（在线实验和实验室实验I）中，要求参与者指出他们最喜欢的颜色方块；在第三个实验中（实验室实验II），要求参与者对六个色块的颜色偏好进行排名。从两个实验环境获得的结果之间的相似性为在线协议提供了一些验证，并表明可以更频繁地使用在线实验。对性别和国籍之间的个人颜色偏好进行了成对比较，结果发现，男性和女性的反应明显不同；但是中英两国参与者之间没有统计学意义。蒙特卡洛模拟的结果表明，对于涉及少量参与者（尤其是少于15名参与者）的个人颜色偏爱研究，应优先采用排序方法。从两个实验环境获得的结果之间的相似性为在线协议提供了一些验证，并表明可以更频繁地使用在线实验。对性别和国籍之间的个人颜色偏好进行了成对比较，结果发现，男性和女性的反应明显不同；但是中英两国参与者之间没有统计学意义。蒙特卡洛模拟的结果表明，对于涉及少量参与者（尤其是少于15名参与者）的个人颜色偏爱研究，应优先采用排序方法。从两个实验环境获得的结果之间的相似性为在线协议提供了一些验证，并表明可以更频繁地使用在线实验。对性别和国籍之间的个人颜色偏好进行了成对比较，结果发现，男性和女性的反应明显不同；但是中英两国参与者之间没有统计学意义。蒙特卡洛模拟的结果表明，对于涉及少量参与者（尤其是少于15名参与者）的个人颜色偏爱研究，应优先采用排序方法。对性别和国籍之间的个人颜色偏好进行了成对比较，结果发现，男性和女性的反应明显不同；但是中英两国参与者之间没有统计学意义。蒙特卡洛模拟的结果表明，对于涉及少量参与者（尤其是少于15名参与者）的个人颜色偏爱研究，应优先采用排序方法。对性别和国籍之间的个人颜色偏爱进行了成对比较，发现男性和女性的反应明显不同；但是中英两国参与者之间没有统计学意义。蒙特卡洛模拟的结果表明，对于涉及少量参与者（尤其是少于15名参与者）的个人颜色偏爱研究，应优先采用排序方法。