. 2019 Oct 19;5(10):e02683. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02683

Table 3.

Nine-point scale and its description.

Values	Definition	Description
1	Equal importance	Two criteria contribute equally to the objective in the immediately higher level
3	Weak importance of one over another	Experience and judgment slightly favor one criterion over another
5	Essential or strong importance	Experience and judgment strongly favor one criterion over another
7	Very strong or demonstrated importance	A criterion is favored very strongly; its dominance demonstrated in practice
9	Absolute importance	The evidence favoring one criterion over another is of the highest possible order of Affirmation
2, 4, 6, 8,	Intermediate values between adjacent scale values	When compromise is needed
Reciprocals of the the abovejudgments	If Criterion Ci has one of the above judgments compared to Criterion C j, then Cj has the reciprocal value when compared to Ci	A reasonable assumption