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Soft Computing Applications for Group Decision-making and Consensus Modeling pp 165–185Cite as

Fuzzified Likert Scales in Group Multiple-Criteria Evaluation

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Part of the book series: Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing ((STUDFUZZ,volume 357))

Abstract

Likert scales have been in use since 1930s as tool for attitude expression in many fields of social science. Recently there have even been several attempts for the fuzzification of this instrument. In this chapter we explore the possibility of their use in multiple-criteria multi-expert evaluation. We focus on discrete fuzzy Likert scales, that are a generalization of the standard Likert scales. We propose a methodology that deals with the non-uniformity of the distribution of linguistic labels along the underlying ordinal evaluation scale and also with possible response bias. We also consider the analogy of Likert scales (crisp and fuzzy) on continuous universes. Likert-type evaluations of an alternative with respect to various criteria are represented using histograms. Histograms are also used to aggregate the Likert-type evaluations. A transformation of the multi-expert multiple-criteria evaluation represented by a histogram into a 3-bin histogram to control for the response bias is performed and an ideal-evaluation 3-bin histogram is defined. We propose a distance measure to assess the closeness of the overall evaluation to the ideal and suggest the use of the proposed methodology in multiple-criteria multi-expert evaluation.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the grant IGA_FF_2017_011 of the Internal Grant Agency of Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lappeenranta University of Technology, School of Business and Management, Skinnarilankatu 34, 53850, Lappeenranta, Finland

    Jan Stoklasa & Pasi Luukka

  2. Olomouc, Faculty of Arts, Department of Applied Economics, Palacký University, Křížkovského 8, 771 47, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    Jan Stoklasa & Tomáš Talášek

Authors
  1. Jan Stoklasa
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  2. Tomáš Talášek
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  3. Pasi Luukka
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Correspondence to Jan Stoklasa .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Business and Management, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Lappeenranta, Finland

    Mikael Collan

  2. Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland

    Janusz Kacprzyk

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Stoklasa, J., Talášek, T., Luukka, P. (2018). Fuzzified Likert Scales in Group Multiple-Criteria Evaluation. In: Collan, M., Kacprzyk, J. (eds) Soft Computing Applications for Group Decision-making and Consensus Modeling. Studies in Fuzziness and Soft Computing, vol 357. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60207-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60207-3_11

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-60206-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-60207-3

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