A PSYCHOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE DIVIDE-AND-CONQUER PRINCIPLE IN MULTICRITERIA DECISION-MAKING

The principle of ''Divide and Conquer'' (DAC) suggests that: (1) compl ex decision problems should be decomposed into smaller, more manageabl e parts and (2) these smaller parts should be logically aggregated to derive an overall value for each alternative. Typically, decomposition al procedures have been compared to holistic evaluations that require decision makers to simultaneously consider all of the relevant attribu tes in the evaluation of the objects under consideration. These compar isons between decompositional and holistic judgments have primarily us ed a variant of Multiattribute Utility Theory (MAUT). We presented a g eneral experimental framework that allows for a more extensive assessm ent of the DAC principle, as well as the effects of decision complexit y on both holistic and decompositional procedures. We illustrate this approach with a study that uses the Simple Multiattribute Rating Techn ique with Swing Weights (SMARTS; Edwards & Barren, 1994) and the Analy tic Hierarchy Process (AHP; Saaty, 1980), We report data comparing the convergent validity (e.g the agreement between decompositional and ho listic strategies) and the temporal stability for decompositional and holistic judgments on a variety of dependent measures. Decision comple xity did not significantly affect the correspondence between decomposi tional and holistic judgments for both SMARTS and ARP judgments. Resul ts from an ordinal measure of temporal stability indicated the DAC pri nciple was violated for the AHP judgments. For a linear measure of tem poral stability, trends in the data indicated that the predicted effec ts of decision complexity on the DAC principle was violated for the SM ARTS judgments. (C) 1998 Academic Press.