Group decision making is a commonly-used method to develop decision support applications for use in counterterrorism, government management and business intelligence development. An appropriate decision often needs extensive debate among participants in a decision committee; overly similar opinions to a large extent may mislead to a final decision. Measuring opinion similarity between participants (MOSP) in advance is an important strategy to reduce the chance of making and applying inappropriate decisions and is also an important concern when developing a reliable decision support system. Due to the lack of opinion data for a focal topic and the varieties of opinion representations, measuring the similarity is difficult and has not been well-studied in developing decision support. Noting that the similarities gradually alter from time to time with the number and order of considered criteria, this paper develops a gradual aggregation algorithm and establishes a method based on it, called the three-level-similarity measuring (TLSM) method, to measure the opinion similarity at three similarity levels, i.e. the Assessment-Level, the Criterion-Level and the Problem-Level. Two applications of the TLSM method on social policy selection and energy policy evaluation are conducted. The study indicates that the TLSM method can effectively measure the similarity between opinions in small-size or possibly missing opinion data and simulate the generation of a decision dynamically.
Jun ma et al. REF stated a method to reduce the chance of applying inappropriate decisions in the multi-criteria group decision making (MCGDM) in three levels.
A three-level-similarity measuring method of participant opinions in multiple-criteria group decision supports
Decis. Support Syst.
Decis. Support Syst.
Computer Science