Group decision making in best-worst method when the best and worst are not unique: case study of scholar selection

Scholarships for the students are the financial supports provided by the government or institutions. There may be a great number of competing applicants with the knowledge, skills and abilities to successfully fulfill the scholarship needs. So, it is difficult to select the most suitable students among multiple applicants for these providers. In this study, scholarship students' selection is handled as a complex decision making problem, and this problem is solved by integration of two Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods, Best-Worst Method (BWM) and COmbined COmpromise SOlution (CoCoSo). In order to demonstrate the applicability of these methods to the scholarship student selection problem, a real problem is solved. This problem is designed as a group decision making problem, and BWM, the improved Analytic Hierarchy Process method, is employed to derive the criteria weights. A solution to the problem where decision makers' best and worst criteria are not common and unique is suggested. On the other hand, CoCoSo method is used for the ranking purposes of the applicants. The novelty of this study is that scholarship selection problem is solved with BWM and CoCoSo methods for the first time. The integrated usage of BWM and CoCoSo methods is thought as suitable and effective methods to rank or select the best candidate or alternative among a number of candidates or alternatives because of satisfactory results.