Criteria and Attributes

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Criteria and attribute are often used interchangeably. Often people say they do multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) or maybe multi-attribute decision analysis (MADA). They mean the same technique but it is worth knowing that they are, in fact, different.

Criteria are the factors which options are to be measured against. Criteria are plural and criterion is singular. Attributes are the properties of the criterion.

So for example, in looking at choosing a car, one of the factors that may be important is luggage space. 

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The grey boxes are criteria and the red ones are topic areas.

If you think about it, however, there are many different ways to measure luggage space; overall volume is an obvious one. However, this may not be the best choice if you want to transport specific items. You might be a golf fanatic and so it’s important that you can fit a set of golf clubs. These are typically fairly long and require quite a lot of width. The required height is small so a wide boot (trunk) is more important than a tall narrow one. 

Similarly you might want a boot (trunk) that takes rectangular items like suitcases in which case a flat load space that fits two side by side and tall enough for another layer is what’s required. The overall volume is less important.

Knowing this, it is important that when defining each criterion the question is asked "how would you measure success? You may be surprised at the different responses you get for what appears to be exactly the same criterion! This is especially true when you have different stakeholders involved.

Promax software uses the criteria properties dialogue box to set attributes. Right click on a criterion and the box pops up.

You can add a description to explain more about the criterion which is useful (essential) for explaining to others, then decide whether it's a cost, benefit or a harm (to be covered in a later blog but choose Benefit most of the time) and finally click "Edit Measurement Details". 

This comes up with the attribute details as below.

Choose your units and, if necessary, the number of decimal places to be used and that's it! You now have a properly defined criterion that can be used for evaluating options.