Step 1: Assigning a Name

Enter a phrase that characterizes the decision you are trying to make. Examples include:
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Step 2: Listing Alternatives

These are the choices among which you are deciding. You can enter as few as two or all the way up to five. The more specific you are about naming the items, the easier it will be to rate them later on. Some examples:
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Step 3: Assigning Factors and Weights

Factors are the kinds of items you might find in a product feature checklist. But they can also be subjective items, such as the prestige you might attach to the neighborhoods in which houses you're considerating are located. Whatever you enter here, the items should be factors that you can measure either by some hard measure (e.g., the size of a computer' model's hard disk) or by subjective measure (e.g., what the buzz is around campus about a potential college course's prospects are for meeting members of the opposite sex).

Weights are a measure of how important a particular factor is to you. For instance, when buying a car, interior space may be very important to you (rating, say, a 90), but fuel economy is further down the list of considerations (rating perhaps a 30). Each value you enter here is independent of the others: consider each factor individually, and assign a weight value between 1 and 100.

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Step 4: Rating Performance

In this table, you rate how well each potential choice measures up to your expectations in each of the factors. Again, consider each entry cell individually (e.g., how well the BMW 325i performs with respect to interior comfort; how well with respect to fuel economy). No rows or columns need to add up to 100.
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Step 5: Viewing Results

Results are calculated based on the various weights and rankings you entered in previous screens. The specific numbers are not particularly important: their relative positions, however, are what you're looking for. The highest number represents the alternative rating the highest based on your input. Values are shown to four decimal places in case of close races.

Unfortunately, this results screen cannot be printed or saved. If you want to preserve this information take a screen shot using your operating system's screen capture utility (e.g., Windows 95: Press PrtSc; MacOS: Press Cmd-Shift-3).

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