ABSTRACT
Multiple Criteria Analysis is the technique that has been used by policy analysts to find ways to deal with complex policy issues that lack obvious information sources and seem to call for contradictory goals. It is a way to define the criteria that emerge from the cost, effectiveness, political feasibility and implementability categories and use them to make a systematic examination of each alternative that has been identified. Multiple and contradictory values are found in contemporary policy issues. This is one of the main differences between the public and private sectors. There are a number of ways for analysts to express different weighting techniques. If a policy area is complex with multiple players, criteria and goals, an analyst might ask the players individually to provide a weight to each of the items. Some criteria will be more important to some of the players but the weighting process does provide a way for the analyst to discuss priorities with their clients.
