Aggregation of ordinal data using ordered weighted averaging operator weights

In multi‐criteria decision‐making problems, ordinal data themselves provide a convenient instrument for articulating preferences but they impose some difficulty on the aggregation process since ambiguity prevails in the preference structure inherent in the ordinal data. One of the key concerns in the aggregation of ordinal data is to differentiate among the rank positions by reflecting decision‐maker’s preferences. Since individual attitude is fairly different, it is presumable that each ranking position has different importance. In other words, the quantification schemes among the rank positions could vary depending on the individual preference structure. We find that, among others, the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator can help to take this concept into effect on several reasons. First, the OWA operator provides a means to take into account a discriminating factor by introducing the measure of attitudinal character. Second, it can produce appropriate ranking weights corresponding to each rank position by solving a mathematical program subject to the constraint of attitudinal character. To better understand the attitudinal character playing a role as a discriminating factor, we develop centered ranking weights from ordinal weak relations among the ranking positions and then investigate their properties to relate them with the OWA operator weights having the maximum entropy. Finally, we present a method for generating the OWA operator weights via rank‐based weighting functions.