Qualitative modelling of credit scoring : a case study in banking

Several modelling procedures have been suggested in the literature that aim to help credit granting decisions. Most of these utilize statistical, operational research and artificial intelligence techniques to identify patterns among past applications, in order to enable a more well-informed assessment of risk as well as the automation of credit scoring. For some types of loans, we find that the modelling procedure must permit the consideration of qualitative expert judgements concerning the performance attractiveness of the applications. In this paper, we describe in detail the various steps taken to build such a model in the context of the banking sector, using the MACBETH interactive approach. The model addresses the scoring of medium and long term loans to firms, to enable the multicriteria assignment of each application to a category which may range from rejection to acceptance with different spreads.peer-reviewe

Using MACBETH with the choquet integral fundamentals to model interdependencies between elementary concerns in the context of risk management

Effective risk management typically requires the evaluation of multiple consequences of different sources of risk, and multicriteria value models have been used for that purpose. The value of mitigating a risk impact is often considered by risk managers as dependent on the levels of other impacts, therefore there is a need for procedures to identify and model these interactions within a value measurement framework. The Choquet Integral (CI) has been used for this purpose, and several studies in the performance measurement literature have combined the 2-additive CI operator with the MACBETH approach to model interdependencies in real contexts. In this paper, we propose an alternative procedure to model interdependencies and determine the CI parameters from one single MACBETH global matrix. The procedure is illustrated with the construction of a descriptor of impacts to evaluate the risk impacts at ALSTOM Power. The paper further explains the questioning protocol to apply the proposed procedure, as well as how decision-makers can interpret the CI parameters

Portfolio robustness evaluation: a case study in the electricity sector

Managers continually face the task of allocating resources to projects when there is not enough money to fund them all. Portfolio Robustness Evaluation (PROBE) is a multicriteria decision support system developed to help managers to perform that difficult task. This paper presents a PROBE model, developed for an electricity distribution company, to select the best portfolio of projects, subject to budget constraints for different types of projects and various organisational units in multiple time periods. Projects requiring large-scale investments are analysed separately from the small-scale projects. The robustness of the selected portfolio of large-scale projects is analysed in an iterative process where broader uncertainty ranges are considered for the values of the projects, and also when an environmental impact criterion is added to the evaluation model. First published online: 14 Sep 201

Desirability–doability group judgment framework for the collaborative multicriteria evaluation of public policies

Desirability–doability framework (2 × D) is a novel framework for the collaborative evaluation of public policies. Fundamental objectives and performance indicators are agreed upon in workshops, policies are characterised, and barriers to implementation identified. MACBETH interactive protocols are then applied in decision conferences to elicit qualitative judgments about the desirability of policies, within and across objectives; and about their doability under the expected graveness of barriers on contrasting scenarios. Elicited judgments allow, respectively, to construct a shared multicriteria model measuring the overall desirability of policies; and, to measure their doability. Desirability–doability graphs enable visual interactive classification of policies, with sensitivity/robustness analyses of uncertainties. 2 × D was successfully tested in a real-world urban-health policymaking case to evaluate spatial policies. The main novelty of 2 × D is that it bridges the socio-technical gap, present in OR, between the support required by a complex social decision-making process, and that usually offered by analytic techniques – while keeping modeling theoretically sound and simple

Modelling multicriteria value interactions with Reasoning Maps

Idiographic causal maps are extensively employed in Operational Research to support problem structuring and complex decision making processes. They model means-end or causal discourses as a network of concepts connected by links denoting influence, thus enabling the representation of chains of arguments made by decision-makers. There have been proposals to employ such structures to support the structuring of multicriteria evaluation models, within an additive value measurement framework. However, a drawback of this multi-methodological modelling is the loss of richness of interactions along the means-end chains when evaluating options. This has led to the development of methods that make use of the structure of the map itself to evaluate options, such as the Reasoning Maps method, which employs ordinal scales and ordinal operators for such evaluation. However, despite their potential, Reasoning Maps cannot model explicitly value interactions nor perform a quantitative ranking of options, limiting their applicability and usefulness. In this article we propose extending the Reasoning Maps approach through a multilinear evaluation model structure, built with the MACBETH multicriteria method. The model explicitly captures the value interactions between concepts along the map and employs the MACBETH protocol of questioning to assess the strength of influence for each means-end link. The feasibility of the proposed approach to evaluate options and to deal with multicriteria interactions is tested in a real-world application to support the construction of a population health index

Valuing health states: is the MACBETH approach useful for valuing EQ-5D-3L health states?

Background Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs) are a key outcome measure widely used within health technology assessment and health service research studies. QALYs combine quantity and quality of life, with quality of life calculations relying on the value of distinct health states. Such health states’ values capture the preferences of a population and have been typically built through numerical elicitation methods. Evidence points to these value scores being influenced by methods in use and individuals reporting cognitive difficulties in eliciting their preferences. Evidence from other areas has further suggested that individuals may prefer using distinct elicitation techniques and that this preference can be influenced by their numeracy. In this study we explore the use of the MACBETH (Measuring Attractiveness by a Categorical Based Evaluation Technique) non-numerical preference elicitation approach for health states’ evaluation. Methods A new protocol for preference elicitation based on MACBETH (only requiring qualitative judgments) was developed and tested within a web survey format. A sample of the Portuguese general population (n=243) valued 25 EQ-5D-3L health states with the MACBETH protocol and with a variant of the time trade-off (TTO) protocol, for comparison purposes and for understanding respondents’ preference for distinct protocols and differences in inconsistent evaluations. Respondents answered to a short numeracy test, and basic socio-economic information collected. Results Results show that the mean values derived from MACBETH and the TTO variant are strongly correlated; however, there are substantial differences for several health states’ values. Large and similar numbers of logical inconsistencies were found in respondents’ answers with both methods. Participants with higher levels of numeracy according to the test preferred expressing value judgments with MACBETH, while participants with lower levels were mostly indifferent to both methods. Higher correlations between MACBETH and TTO variant evaluations were observed for individuals with higher numeracy. Conclusion Results suggest that it is worth researching the use of non-numerical preference elicitation methods. Numeracy tests more appropriate for preference elicitation when no explicit considerations of uncertainty are made need to be explored and used. Further behavioural research is needed to fully understand the potential for using these methods in distinct settings (e.g. in different evaluation contexts and in face-to-face and non-face-to-face environments), as well as to explore the effect of literacy on assessments and on respondents’ preferences.UID/MULTI/4066/2016info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Global, regional, and national burden of disorders affecting the nervous system, 1990–2021: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

BackgroundDisorders affecting the nervous system are diverse and include neurodevelopmental disorders, late-life neurodegeneration, and newly emergent conditions, such as cognitive impairment following COVID-19. Previous publications from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factor Study estimated the burden of 15 neurological conditions in 2015 and 2016, but these analyses did not include neurodevelopmental disorders, as defined by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11, or a subset of cases of congenital, neonatal, and infectious conditions that cause neurological damage. Here, we estimate nervous system health loss caused by 37 unique conditions and their associated risk factors globally, regionally, and nationally from 1990 to 2021.MethodsWe estimated mortality, prevalence, years lived with disability (YLDs), years of life lost (YLLs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), with corresponding 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs), by age and sex in 204 countries and territories, from 1990 to 2021. We included morbidity and deaths due to neurological conditions, for which health loss is directly due to damage to the CNS or peripheral nervous system. We also isolated neurological health loss from conditions for which nervous system morbidity is a consequence, but not the primary feature, including a subset of congenital conditions (ie, chromosomal anomalies and congenital birth defects), neonatal conditions (ie, jaundice, preterm birth, and sepsis), infectious diseases (ie, COVID-19, cystic echinococcosis, malaria, syphilis, and Zika virus disease), and diabetic neuropathy. By conducting a sequela-level analysis of the health outcomes for these conditions, only cases where nervous system damage occurred were included, and YLDs were recalculated to isolate the non-fatal burden directly attributable to nervous system health loss. A comorbidity correction was used to calculate total prevalence of all conditions that affect the nervous system combined.FindingsGlobally, the 37 conditions affecting the nervous system were collectively ranked as the leading group cause of DALYs in 2021 (443 million, 95% UI 378–521), affecting 3·40 billion (3·20–3·62) individuals (43·1%, 40·5–45·9 of the global population); global DALY counts attributed to these conditions increased by 18·2% (8·7–26·7) between 1990 and 2021. Age-standardised rates of deaths per 100 000 people attributed to these conditions decreased from 1990 to 2021 by 33·6% (27·6–38·8), and age-standardised rates of DALYs attributed to these conditions decreased by 27·0% (21·5–32·4). Age-standardised prevalence was almost stable, with a change of 1·5% (0·7–2·4). The ten conditions with the highest age-standardised DALYs in 2021 were stroke, neonatal encephalopathy, migraine, Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, diabetic neuropathy, meningitis, epilepsy, neurological complications due to preterm birth, autism spectrum disorder, and nervous system cancer.InterpretationAs the leading cause of overall disease burden in the world, with increasing global DALY counts, effective prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation strategies for disorders affecting the nervous system are needed

A career choice problem: an example of how to use MACBETH to build a quantitative model based on qualitative value judgements

MACBETH is an approach designed to build a quantitative model of values, developed in a way that enables facilitators to avoid forcing decision makers to produce direct numerical representations of their preferences. MACBETH employs a non-numerical interactive questioning procedure that compares two stimuli at a time, requesting only a qualitative judgment about their difference of attractiveness. As the answers are given, their consistency is verified, and a numerical scale that is representative of the decision maker's judgments is subsequently generated and discussed. This paper makes use of the MACBETH approach and software to help an individual select his future career from a number of self imposed possibilities. A comparison is made with the direct numerical technique SMART, previously used with the same intent