Cardinal and Rank Ordering of Criteria — Addressing Prescription within Weight Elicitation

• Published in: International journal of information technology & decision making Vol. 14; no. 6; pp. 1299 - 1330
• Main Authors: Larsson, Aron, Riabacke, Mona, Danielson, Mats, Ekenberg, Love
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore World Scientific Publishing Company 01.11.2015; World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte., Ltd
• Subjects: Computer and Systems Sciences; Construction; Criteria; criteria ranking; criteria weights; data- och systemvetenskap; Decision analysis; Decision making; elicitation method; Engines; incomplete information; Inference; Joining; Methods; Multi-criteria decision analysis; Multiple criterion; Order disorder; Weight; incomplete information; criteria weights; Multi-criteria decision analysis; criteria ranking; elicitation method
• ISSN: 0219-6220; 1793-6845; 1793-6845
• DOI: 10.1142/S021962201450059X

Weight elicitation methods in multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) are often cognitively demanding, require too much precision, time and effort. Some of the issues may be remedied by connecting elicitation methods to an inference engine facilitating a quick and easy method for decision-makers to use weaker input statements, yet being able to utilize these statements in a method for decision evaluation. In this paper, we propose a fast and practically useful weight elicitation method, answering to many of the requirements. The method builds on the ideas of rank-order methods, but can also take imprecise cardinal information into account. The method is subsequently employed in two real-life case studies and compared to a case where a simple ratio weight procedure using exact input statements was employed.