Treffer: Decision Analysis Incorporating Preferences of Groups.

Individuals or small groups often make decisions which affect the interests of other people. The decision makers may wish to incorporate the preferences of these people into their analysis of alternative courses of action. A normative methodology for doing this, using results from decision theory, is developed in the report. The theoretical development divides into three parts. First, methods are developed for combining the preferences of various individuals into a single description of the preferences of the entire group. Second, new methods are developed for assessing the preferences of the different individuals. Finally, a Bayesian approach is given for incorporating into the analysis the decision makers' uncertainty about the preferences of the individuals of interest. The methodology is applied to three 'real-world' situations. (Author)