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About this lesson

Define what it is that matters to you when deciding between different alternatives.

Exercise files

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Criteria
57.9 KB Criteria - Solution
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Quick reference

Criteria

These are the things that matter to you when deciding between different alternatives.

When to use

Add criteria after configuring your decision, but before making trade-offs. If you change the configuration of your decision after having already having added criteria, or if you change your criteria or their levels after making trade-offs, your results may be invalidated or deleted.

Instructions

Things to keep in mind when thinking of criteria to add

Preferential independence
  • Your criteria should be preferentially independent. This means that, for example, "color" and "beauty" shouldn't both be part of your criteria, because if you like the color of an item, then you are likely to also find it more beautiful.
  • However, your criteria do not have to be totally independent. For example, "size" and "weight" can both be part of your criteria, because although size often affects weight, you can still dream of a very large feather-light phone!
Criteria vs costs & other considerations
  • Your criteria should be reserved for potentially beneficial variables. Other attributes (such as cost, risk, etc; or other information such as brand or department) should be entered as "costs & other considerations". 
  • See the "Costs and Other Considerations" lesson for more detail

How to add criteria & levels

  1.  In the menu on the left, click on "criteria".
  2. Type the names of your criteria in any of the larger boxes. To add an additional criterion, click the blue "new criterion" button either at the top or at the bottom of the page.
  3. Add the levels under each criterion, ordered from lowest ranked at the top, to highest ranked at the bottom. To add an additional level, click on the green "add level" button below the corresponding criterion.

Editing criteria & levels

  1. To edit names, click on the name of any criterion or level and enter the new name that you want to call it.
  2. To change the order of criteria, click on the "reorder criteria" button at the top, click & hold the cross shaped cursor at the left of the criterion you would like to move, and drag the criterion to its new position. Note that reordering your criteria has no effect on your results.
    • After you are finished reordering your criteria, click the "expand all" button at the top to view your levels again.
  3. To change the order of levels, click & hold the cross shaped cursor at the left of the level you would like to move, and drag the leve to its new position. Note that reordering your levels does impact your results.
  4. To copy a criterion and its levels, click on the diamond shaped icon on the right of that criterion.
  5. To delete a criterion or a level, click on the little garbage icon on the right of that criterion/level.

Hints & tips

  • The terminology for criteria and levels can be changed at any time on the configuration page
  • You can enter different names for criteria to be displayed on charts and tables by opening the sidebar and editing the "short name".
  • You can enter different names for criteria to be displayed during trade-offs by opening the sidebar and editing the "trade-off name". 
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  • 00:05 When trying to make a decision, you probably have a few factors that you're
  • 00:10 considering to help you figure out what the best alternative is.
  • 00:14 In the multi-criteria decision-making, the things that matter to us when deciding
  • 00:19 between different alternatives are called criteria.
  • 00:23 Maybe we're looking for a new house to buy, and we're concerned about the size,
  • 00:28 the view and the number of rooms.
  • 00:31 Or maybe we want to hire a new candidate for a job and
  • 00:34 we want to look at their education, their experience and their personality.
  • 00:41 In this example, we'll be looking at a new smartphone to buy.
  • 00:45 So we'll consider the camera quality, the battery life and the reviews.
  • 00:52 When choosing our criteria,
  • 00:53 we want to make sure that they're preferentially independent.
  • 00:58 That means that for example,
  • 01:00 we can choose both colour and beauty as criteria at the same time.
  • 01:06 Because probably if something has a colour that we like,
  • 01:09 then we'll also find it more beautiful.
  • 01:11 So those two criteria aren't preferentially independent,
  • 01:15 and if we were to include them both,
  • 01:18 it would be double counting which would skew our results.
  • 01:22 But on the other hand, being preferentially independent doesn't mean
  • 01:26 that the criteria have to be completely independent of each other.
  • 01:30 So for example, we can want a phone to be both light and have a large screen,
  • 01:36 even though generally the larger the screen the heavier the phone.
  • 01:41 The difference is that our preference for
  • 01:43 screen size does not depend on our preference for weight.
  • 01:47 Which is why we can list both size and weight as considerations.
  • 01:52 The other thing to keep in mind is to enter costs and other considerations,
  • 01:57 like purchasing price or brand separately from our criteria.
  • 02:02 This is because having cost and other considerations separate from our criteria,
  • 02:07 helps us better analyse our alternatives.
  • 02:10 For this example we'll keep the criteria focused on things like,
  • 02:15 how good the camera is or how good the reviews are.
  • 02:19 And we can weigh it up against costs later using the
  • 02:23 value-for-money chart, which we can find in the alternative selection page.
  • 02:29 So let's start adding our criteria.
  • 02:34 We type the name of our criteria in any of these bigger boxes.
  • 02:38 So let's say camera quality, battery life and reviews.
  • 02:44 Below each of these criteria we enter the corresponding levels.
  • 02:49 We can always add any additional levels by clicking on this green add level button.
  • 02:56 We need to make sure that our levels are ordered from lowest ranked on the top
  • 03:00 to highest ranked on the bottom.
  • 03:03 Maybe we're also interested in the design of the phone.
  • 03:07 We can add a fourth criterion by clicking on new criterion at the bottom here.
  • 03:13 Or we can also copy any existing criterion with its levels,
  • 03:17 by clicking this icon to the right of the criterion name.
  • 03:23 To delete a criterion, we click on the little garbage icon to the right.
  • 03:28 In the details on the right,
  • 03:30 we can choose to enter a shorter criterion name to display on charts and
  • 03:35 tables, or a different name to be displayed when making trade-offs.
  • 03:40 This can be useful if you're making trade-offs of a group of decision-makers rather
  • 03:45 than alone.
  • 03:46 And maybe we need to clarify some of our terms to avoid confusion.
  • 03:52 It may be interesting to see how our results may differ by excluding one or
  • 03:56 more of our criteria.
  • 03:59 We can test this out by disabling the criterion enabled option for
  • 04:03 any of our criteria.
  • 04:05 This way that criterion will not be included on the alternatives page,
  • 04:10 in the trade-offs or in the results, either for us or
  • 04:14 for any other participant in the case of voting or a survey.
  • 04:19 This option can also be useful if you want to focus on other criteria instead,
  • 04:24 without deleting any existing criteria.
  • 04:28 The other two options are used for surveys,
  • 04:31 where different participants may have different ideas on which criteria matter
  • 04:36 to them and how the levels should be ordered.
  • 04:39 We'll go over this settings in a conjoint analysis course.
  • 04:44 Up here we can collapse all of our criteria to make it easier to view
  • 04:49 all the criteria at once.
  • 04:51 And we can also re-order them by clicking the re-order criteria button.
  • 04:57 So now that we know how to add and modify our criteria,
  • 05:01 the next step would be either to add any costs and
  • 05:04 other considerations or any impossible combinations
  • 05:08 or any alternatives, if we have any of these things defined.
  • 05:14 But if we don't have any of these things to consider,
  • 05:17 then we can just go to the trade-offs.

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