A Criterion Validation of Multiattribute Utility Analysis and of a Group Communication Strategy.

This study investigates the use of an external criterion for validating additive utility assessments under certainty. Utilities were elicited from twenty-four groups via consensus judgment for ten hypothetical applicants for bank credit cards. The research design completely crossed two factors relevant to group utility assessment 1 using a decomposition MAUA procedure or not, and 2 using a formal group communication strategy or not. The quality of each groups utility judgments was defined to be the Pearson produce-moment correlation between the groups judged utilities and utilities output from a configural nonlinear model used by Security Pacific National Bank in evaluating applicants for Master Charge. Group satisfaction measures were also obtained. The decomposition methodology and the group communication strategy both aided groups in making assessments that are more consistent with those of the bank model, which is based on a systematic collection and interpretation of a large amount of relevant data. Simplified procedures for obtaining weight parameters in the multi-attribute utility analysis yielded better overall utilities than more complicated ratio-estimation techniques. Author