On the Practical Consideration of Evaluators’ Credibility in Evaluating Relative Importance of Criteria for Some Real-Life Multicriteria Problems: An Overview

Abstract

A multicriteria (MC) problem usually consists of a set of predetermined alternatives or subjects to be analyzed, which is prescribed under a finite number of criteria. MC problems are found in various applications to solve various area problems. There are three goals in solving the problems: ranking, sorting or grouping the alternatives according to their overall scores. Most of MC methods require the criteria weights to be combined mathematically with the quality of the criteria in finding the overall score of each alternative. This chapter provides an overview on the practical consideration of evaluators’ credibility or superiority in calculating the criteria weights and overall scores of the alternatives. In order to show how the degree of credibility of evaluators can be practically considered in solving a real problem, a numerical example of evaluation of students’ academic performance is available in the Appendix at the end of the chapter. The degree of credibility of teachers who participated in weighting the academic subjects was determined objectively, and the rank-based criteria weighting methods were used in the example. Inclusion of the degree of credibility of evaluators who participated in solving multicriteria problems would make the results more realistic and accurate.