Aggregation of group priorities in analytic hierarchy process—When to aggregate and when not to

Decision on priorities of alternatives can be made on the basis of judgments from a group of individuals in Analytic Hierarchy Process. Often these groups are of different existing backgrounds (social, geographical, or gender), and it is of interest to see whether these different existing backgrounds create any difference in their prioritization of the alternatives in the decision problem. In this article, we develop a methodology to measure the level of agreement among groups from different existing backgrounds regarding their priorities on a fixed set of alternatives. When these group judgments from different existing backgrounds have significant agreement among them, a common vector of priority weights of the alternatives can be obtained. Otherwise, separate vectors of priority weights should be obtained for groups from different existing backgrounds. A numerical example with the implementation of methodologies proposed in the article is discussed.