Setting research priorities: an example from agriculture using the Analytic Hierarchy Process

How should potential research outputs be compared, in order to set prioriti es, when a: diverse range of goals and outputs is possible? This paper intr oduces a: multiple-criteria weighting method, the Analytic Hierarchy Proces s (AHP), which can be applied in ex post research evaluation. AHP transform s qualitative subjective judgments into quantitative data (weights). It is a decision analysis technique. The method is illustrated with a simple hypo thetical example from a! sorghum research program.