An application of the group decision making stress method to the group Analytic Hierarchy Process

This paper proposes a new method of ‘group decision making stress’ and studies its application to the Analytic Hierarchy Process for the purpose of effective group decision making. This method grades the evaluators in such a way as to minimize the sum total of each evaluator's frustration, the ‘group decision making stress’ without operating the raw data of each evaluator's preference. By rationally grading the participants, those who tend to share similar preferences with others would be graded relatively high and those with unique preferences would be graded relatively low. Every preference, however, is appropriately taken into account, and the result shall be fair. Applications of the method will allow an easier search of groups with similar preferences and help to converge the group preference.