Rating The BOCR Nodes Against Strategic Criteria

• Strategic criteria are objectives or criteria that the decision making entity needs to always make sure are always served, no matter what decision is being considered. It is somewhat nebulous to directly compare the BOCR against each other with respect to the goal. In some of the models and papers people have done that, but it is probably better to use the rating approach. In fact, in some of the sample models the BOCR were rated in a separate model to establish their priorities, then forced into the BOCR multilevel system by connecting the goal to the BOCR and inputting the derived priorities as data (the Misc Data command in the comparisons mode). In some early versions of the software there was no capability to do the ratings in the same model.
•  Pairwise comparing the BOCR directly against the Goal has the same weakness that pairwise comparing criteria against the Goal has in a standard AHP model. That is how ANP evolved. You need to look at alternatives to understand what the criteria mean to you.
•  The Ratings allow you to link the global invariant strategic criteria to the alternatives of this particular decision and you use that to evaluate the importance of the BOCR for that decision. You should be holding in mind the best alternative under Benefits (which you find out by synthesizing the results in the control criteria subnet for benefits after you have made all the judgments) as you rate how it affects in a beneficial way each strategic criterion across the row.
•  Sometimes the benefits of the decision are really important. Imagine a model for a recently married college graduate to buy a car. It may be so overwhelmingly important to have a car to get to work to satisfy his strategic criteria of having economic security and taking care of the family, that the costs become almost unimportant.
•  Similarly for Opportunities: how does the best alternative under Opportunities impact the strategic criteria in a positive way. If your categories are High, Medium and Low, selecting High on a strategic criterion means the best alternative under Opportunities is really good, positive, for that strategic criterion.
•  Turning to Costs and Risks, you also consider the highest priority alternative, that is, the most costly (most risky). Using the same High, Med, Low categories, selecting High on a strategic criterion means the highest priority alternative costs a lot for that strategic objective, i.e., it is bad. This increases the priorities and totals score for Costs, and since you are subtracting Costs in the formula, the larger the totals (priorities) the more important Costs becomes. Imagine if Costs were all you were concerned with. Then you would get a big negative number in the formula if that alternative has a high bad impact on all the strategic criteria.