Using scoring functions in a group decision-making procedure with heterogeneous experts and qualitative assessments

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a group decision-making procedure to rank alternatives in the context of ordered qualitative scales that not necessarily are uniform (the proximities between consecutive terms of the scales can be perceived as different). The procedure manages two ordered qualitative scales. One of them is used to determine the weights of the experts according to their expertise, taking into account the assessments given by a decision-maker to the experts. And another one, that is used by the experts to assess the alternatives. In order to assign numerical scores to the linguistic terms of the ordered qualitative scales, we have introduced and analyzed some scoring functions. They are based on the concept of ordinal proximity measure that properly represents the ordinal proximities between the linguistic terms of the ordered qualitative scales.