Trade Off Weights

Introduction

Making trade off weights is essential during the decision making process. It is essential for the decision maker to consider all the relevant benefits of the options in order to make sure that sound decisions that address all concerns are made. Trade off are made between objectives and the process entails determination of substitution or trade-off ratio. This refers to how much can be surrendered in order to achieve a given objectives. The various methods for developing trade off weights are direct method, swing weighting, and equivalence lottery. Each of these methods will be examined.

Direct method

This method is one of the commonly used methods of assigning numerical judgments to attributes with the sole purpose of signifying their relative importance. One advantage of this method is that the weights elicited are more reliable compared to other method. It is however important to note that cases of bias may arise due to the fact that people are asked to directly rate each of the attributes (Tampa Bay Water, 2006). Some people may not be totally sincere. For this method to yield optimal results, it is essential to do re-test whereby a test is given to the same people on different occasions. This method of redeveloping trade off weights may be used for qualitative study since it may entail the use of questionnaires whereby people are asked to answer a number of questions.

Swing weighting

Swing weighting is a method based on analyzing the different decisions and their impact on individuals. It is essential to examine how each decision has an impact on different goals in people. The relative importance of the goals are determines by asking oneself the goal that could result from the worst possible achievement of that goal to the best possible achievement. Hence, decisions that could lead to the best possible achievement of goals are considered. This is an effective method though it can have a disadvantage in that the different individuals have different priorities in terms of achieving particular goals (Aven, 2003). Hence, by treating each person as a different entity, the process of decision making may prove to be challenging. This method can be used for qualitative study since there are different entities involved.

Equivalence Lottery

This involves assigning of equivalent weights to a set of decisions. Several options could be assigned similar objectives during the decision making process. It is important to note that this method may be inaccurate and biased due to the fact that some goals may be inappropriately placed. There is also the issue of uncertainty in that different goals and objectives regarding a certain decision made can change with time (Aven, 2003). This method can be used qualitative research study since it is based on the opinions of different individuals regarding goals intended to be achieved.

References

Aven, T. (2003) Foundations of risk analysis: a knowledge and decision-oriented

Perspective. John Wiley and Sons.

TampaBay Water (2006) Decision Process and Trade-Off Analysis Model for Supply

Rotation and Planning. American Water Works Association.

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