Analyzing Consensus Measures in Group Decision Making

Abstract

Abstract In Group Decision Making (GDM) problems before to obtain a solution a high level of consensus among experts is required. Consensus measures are usually built using similarity functions measuring how close experts’ opinions or preferences are. Similarity functions are defined based on the use of a metric describing the distance between experts’ opinions or preferences. In the literature, die rent distance functions have been proposed to implement consensus measures. This paper presents analyzes the effect of the application of some die rent distance functions for measuring consensus in GDM. By using the nonparametric Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test, it is concluded that die rent distance functions can produce significantly die rent results. Moreover, it is also shown that their application also has a significant elect on the speed of achieving consensus. Finally, these results are analyzed and used to derive decision support rules, based on a convergent criterion, that can be used to control the convergence speed of the consensus process using the compared distance functions.