An interactive aid for descriptive multiattribute problems

Certain selection decisions involve attributes of a qualitative nature. Descriptive labels, rather than quantitative values, express the attribute values. A method is presented that will solve multiple attribute problems with descriptive attributes. The method relies on dominance, dictated by multiple-attribute value functions, for eliminating alternatives from a discrete set of alternatives. Only simple paired comparison preferences are required from a decision maker. An interactive setting minimizes the number of responses required of a decision maker. An example and computational results are included.