Multi –Criteria Choice and Ranking of the Objects for Socio-Economic Studies

Abstract

Socio-economic studies of rural areas due to their natural and economic heterogeneity combined with the territorial dispersion of the population require the involvement of sufficiently large resources. As a rule, the resources for socio-economic studies are limited. Those facts raise the question of choosing objects from a variety of similar ones. The choice of a pilot object for research and testing of various socio-economic programs is a multi-criteria task. The aim of the study is to develop a chain of methodological techniques and procedures that provide the selection of the most suitable objects for social studies based on a set of criteria. Methods and procedures of mathematical and statistical analysis are used. Well-known methods based on the calculation of normalized distances of feature values to the corresponding "reference" values, as well as the method of the analytical hierarchical process, were subjected to critical analysis. A method has been developed which combines the advantages of currently available approaches. It is concluded that the method allows taking into account the objective and subjective components of the choice problem as effectively as possible and strengthens the scientific validity of the selection of appropriate rural territories for the implementation of pilot socio-economic projects. The method has been developed and tested on the materials of the region of Northern Kazakhstan; and it allows ranking the territories according to any set of criteria.