Judgment scales and consistency measure in AHP

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is widely used method in multiple-attribute decision making. In the recent literature many authors used different judgment scales which influenced the results and decisions. In this paper the author reviews and discusses effects of utilization of various judgment scales on priority estimation in AHP. There has been studies that have been concerned with the comparison of judgment scales but there were no studies concerned with consistency measures that are needed. The goal of this paper is to compare and discuss the application of various judgment scales on the results in particular practical example that has been used in previous paper by Saaty (2003). Thus the focus of the paper is to analyze the impact of using different judgment scales on the resulting priorities and consistency to default scale as proposed by Saaty. Results suggest that judgment scales have a profound impact on criteria priorities but not on ranking of criteria. However, the consistency varies among applied judgment scales. Authors calculated the values of random index needed for calculation of the consistency index in AHP for all concerned scales. Based on them the consistency index was computed and compared. Both consistent and inconsistent Saaty matrices were used for comparison. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of ECE 2014.