This package provides functions for generating and inspecting survey designs for choice-based conjoint (CBC) survey experiments in R. Each function in the package begins with cbc_ and supports a step in the following process for designing and analyzing survey experiments:

Workflow diagram showing the six-step cbcTools process: Generate Profiles (cbc_profiles) -> Create Priors (cbc_priors) -> Generate Design (cbc_design) -> Inspect Design (cbc_inspect) -> Simulate Choices (cbc_choices) -> Assess Power (cbc_power)

After installing the package, got to the Getting Started page to learn how to use the package.

Installation

You can install the latest version of {cbcTools} from CRAN:

install.packages("cbcTools")

or you can install the development version of {cbcTools} from GitHub:

# install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("jhelvy/cbcTools")

Load the package with:

library(cbcTools)

Alternatives

The cbcTools package is an open-source alternative to commercial design software such as Ngene and Sawtooth Software. Other open-source conjoint experiment design packages include idefix and spdesign.

Author, Version, and License Information

Author: John Paul Helveston https://www.jhelvy.com/
Date First Written: October 23, 2020
License: MIT

Citation Information

If you use this package for in a publication, I would greatly appreciate it if you cited it - you can get the citation by typing citation("cbcTools") into R:

citation("cbcTools")
#> To cite cbcTools in publications use:
#> 
#>   Helveston JP (2025). _cbcTools: Design and Analyze Choice-Based
#>   Conjoint Experiments_. R package,
#>   <https://jhelvy.github.io/cbcTools/>.
#> 
#> A BibTeX entry for LaTeX users is
#> 
#>   @Manual{,
#>     title = {{cbcTools}: Design and Analyze Choice-Based Conjoint Experiments},
#>     author = {John Paul Helveston},
#>     year = {2025},
#>     note = {R package},
#>     url = {https://jhelvy.github.io/cbcTools/},
#>   }