Supporting complex group decisions: A probabilistic multi-dimensional scaling approach

Groups often face complex decisions; decisions in which the decision alternatives are not clearly defined and the criteria for choosing an alternative are subject to dispute within the group. We present a Group Decision Support System that will use judgments from the group to visualize the decision problem in a probabilistic geometric space. In this geometric representation, actual decision alternatives and an ideal alternative—an artificial alternative that identifies the ideal solution to the group's decision dilemma—are portrayed as distributions in a multi-dimensional space. Dispersions of the distributions measure the uncertainties of the decision process. The psychometric theory used to develop the probabilistic geometric representation is described. Preliminary research is presented which demonstrates that geometric representations of this type help groups both to understand better the decision they face and to find better solutions.