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Addressing rank reversal in subgroup dominance benefit of the doubt model: A case study of the human development index
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Addressing rank reversal in subgroup dominance benefit of the doubt model: A case study of the human development index

Chonghui Zhang, Sibo Chen, Weihua Su, Tomas Balezentis and Lev Benjamin
European journal of operational research, v 334(2), pp 562-574
16 Oct 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2026.02.006
Featured in Collection :   Drexel's Newest Publications

Abstract

Benefit of the doubt Composite indicators Multiple criteria analysis Subgroup dominance
•A graph subset dominance BoD (GSD-BoD) model is proposed to mitigate rank reversal.•Explicit graph topology is utilized to construct robust frontier subset structures.•Endogenous weighting is preserved without resorting to restrictive common weights.•Simulations confirm superior ranking stability and logical interpretability. Benefit of the doubt (BoD) models are widely used for multicriteria analysis. A BoD model allows the weights of criteria to vary across observations based on the observed data; however, this can reduce the discriminatory power and induce rank reversal. The common weight BoD was developed to mitigate these issues at the expense of the “benefit of the doubt” itself because a degree of weight flexibility is lost. This paper proposes the graph subset dominance BoD (GSD-BoD) method to reduce the number of observations within groups of decision-making units with similar performance and allow BoD weights to be unrestricted within those groups. As a result, the proposed GSD-BoD method overcomes the major limitations of the conventional BoD method and its extensions without increasing the occurrence of the rank reversal. The proposed method is tested through illustrative examples and simulations.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
International collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Management
Operations Research & Management Science
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