Introduction and Survey of Group Decision Making with Applications to Worth Assessment

In a society, decisions often affect groups of people instead of isolated individuals. In such cases, planners and decision makers are usually expected to consider the preferences of Previous approaches to the problem of amalgamating the individual preferences into a form which can be used to guide the decision maker are surveyed, and the role worth assessment plays in the group decision making problem is considered. Our approach here is to define the problem of group decision making and develop acceptable methodologies to treat the problem. Arrow has presented a set of conditions which acceptable methodologies should satisfy, and we use those conditions as our guide. Black has considered the case of single-peaked preferences and majority rule as acceptable methodologies, and we also examine his work. We extend the concept of single-peaked preferences to the problem of selecting a numerical quantity from a continuous interval. We arbitrarily define the mean as an acceptable social welfare function for such a case. We then couple the mean with the method of majority voting for two alternatives to create a procedure for assessment of the worth of complex alternatives by a group. Applications to worth assessment are discussed.