Standard Form to Condensation Matrix

The problem of choosing the best approach for the Standard Form to Condensation Matrix step is quite significant.

After identifying the cycle set (i.e. repeated rows/column in the standard form matrix), the next step is to replace this cycle set with one of the elements in the set. This is done by deleting all the elements in the cycle set (by deleting the corresponding rows and columns from the matrix) except one element. The approaches described above don’t make clear how to choose this element. Warfield suggested choosing the first element in the cycle set. But this choice affects decisions in the following pairwise comparisons.

Alternative approaches and/or include:

• Choose the element with the highest votes
• Allow the participants to decide and choose
• Ask the participants to develop a new wording that captures the meaning of all ideas in the cycle
• Print and display in surrounding walls the ideas in cycles
• Display all ideas in cycle during the structuring process