How to Make a Decision Using a Quantitative Scoring System

Decision making, especially for questions that can drastically affect your life, can be an excruciating task. If you want to do more than just flip a coin to make a decision, a quantitative scoring system is one possible option. There are a range of different quantitative methods that you can design, but a few basic steps can help guide you in the decision-making process.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Decide beforehand if you're going to commit yourself to the outcome of the quantitative analysis or not. It's easy to reach a quantitative result and then dismiss it as being against your intuition. If you want to make a decision, commit yourself to choosing based on the results of the system; otherwise, just decide to use the system as additional input.
2. Determine what your requirements, desires, preferences and other criteria are for the decision you want to make. The more comprehensive your list, the more helpful the analysis will be.
3. Prioritize the criteria that you come up with in Step 2. Make a list with the most important criteria at the top. Make note of any criteria that are of equal importance to you.
4. Assign a number of points to each criteria, with those that are more important getting a greater number of points. You may want to start with 100 points and divide them among the criteria, for example. Whatever your method, make the distribution of points correspond as much as possible to how you view the relative importance of each criterion.
5. Rate each decision option for each criterion that you list in Step 3. Assign each option some number of points less than or equal to the number you choose in Step 4 for each criterion.
6. Add the total points for each decision option and compare the scores of each option. The option with the greatest number of points should be the one that best fits your criteria for the decision-making process.
7. Stick with your commitment from Step 1, if you made one. Try to avoid wallowing in indecision by making a choice and sticking to it whenever possible.

Tips & Warnings

• You can make a table with the criteria on one axis and the decision options on the other. This is one way to have a neat arrangement of the scores.
• Doing this analysis several times on different days may help eliminate any biases due to moods on a particular day. Decide beforehand if you want to take this approach and how many different times you'll do it, however, or you may end up being unable to decide when to stop.
• In Steps 5 and 6, don't overanalyze. Go with your first idea for assigning a number of points and a relative score for each criterion. Your first impression is probably your best bet.