Comparison of Judgment Scales of the Analytical Hierarchy Process — A New Approach

The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) remains a popular multi-criteria decision method. One topic under discussion of AHP is the use of different scales to translate judgments into ratios. The author makes a new approach to compare different scale functions and to derive a recommendation for the application of scales. The approach is based on simple analytic functions and takes into consideration the number of criteria of the decision problem. A generalization of the so-called balanced scale is proposed, and a new adaptive-balanced scale is introduced. Scales are then categorized and compared based on weight boundaries and weight ratios, weight uncertainties, weight dispersion and number of decision criteria. Finally, a practical example of a decision hierarchy is presented applying the different scales. The results show that the generalized balanced scale improves weight dispersion and weight uncertainty in comparison to the fundamental AHP scale. The proposed adaptive-balanced scale overcomes the problem of a change of the maximum weight depending on the number of decision criteria.