Having the responsibility to take the decision in the evaluation of more than one option could be simplified by doing it with standardized criteria to obtain an objective result to have the possibility to compare the different options between them.

You can improve your decisions through ponderated measurement, using a template to define the aspects to be evaluated, the ponderation for every aspect, and then evaluate all the options with the same criteria.

Benefits of using ponderated measurement

Using ponderated measurement to take decisions about an option that has more than one available has a lot of benefits, some of them are mentioned here:

• The decision made is objective when you have the numeric results to make the final comparison between options.
• If the options are evaluated during a long period of time, allow to have a stable criterion and avoid making decisions based on circumstances because one valorization is most recent than the other.
• Allow to previsualize all the criteria that you want to consider when evaluating options and face the decision stage with a clear definition of what are you expecting, avoiding possible blind spots in an unstructured measurement.

How to create ponderated evaluations?

A ponderated evaluation must be used when a decision about more than one option must be taken and is necessary to compare with the same criteria.

1. Define the criteria to be evaluated. This criterion will be the reference to compare all the options and must be defined based on what is expected to be evaluated. For example: if the evaluation is about a candidate for a job position, 3 criteria could be: education and knowledge, professional experience, and cultural fit.
2. Define the important indicators for every criterion. To be more specific about the evaluation of the different criteria, different indicators must be defined for every one of them. These indicators are a list of the more important aspects for every criterion. For example indicators of the criterion “Education and knowledge” could be related studies, self-taught learning, and additional studies.
3. Define the ponderation for every criterion. Being specific in the definition of indicators for every criterion will allow valuing the importance of every one of them when an evaluation is happening about the different options. But is important to define a ponderation for every criterion defined. The ponderation is a percentage value that summarizes the definition of all the criteria, must be equivalent to 100% and must be assigned based on the relevance that every criterion has over the evaluation of the options. For example: in the same case of the candidate for a job position evaluation with the criteria defined in point number 1, the ponderated valuation could be: education and knowledge 35%, professional experience 40%, and cultural fit 25%.

How to use the ponderated evaluations?

When you have all the criteria defined and the ponderation to evaluate every one of them, now you can use those indicators to rate all the options available. But is important to create a register where you can see and compare all the results for every option.

These registers could be created on Google Spreadsheet, Excel, Notion, or any other edition tool, in order to start measuring the first option, the second option, and as many as needed until obtaining the final result to compare between. To reference properly the options to be evaluated is important to add an identifier to the template in use, where you can add the name of the option and show the title of the evaluation made (job candidates, test results, quotes review, or any other).

How to measure a ponderated evaluation?

We already have defined the ponderated values for every criterion and every measurement of any indicator should be over 100%, it means that if the result for an indicator is 75% of the total value, that’s the rate you have to do over it. This will allow to make an equivalence of that rate * the ponderation and obtain a result. For example: if an indicator with a 35% ponderation is rated with 75%, the result will be 26.25% for that indicator, considering that 35% should be the if the rate was 100%.

When to use ponderated evaluations?

In any scenario where you have to consider more than one option to be selected is helpful to use a ponderated evaluation to obtain an objective result to make the decision. Here are a few examples where you can use ponderated evaluations and how should be helpful:

• Job interviews. When you are looking for a person for a job position in an interview you are considering different criteria to be matched as experience, knowledge level, and personal interests that could be measured through a ponderated evaluation.
• Proposals review. When there is more than one proposal of the work plan or creative ideas, you can consider the criteria and their valorization to allow to measure all the options in the same way and make a decision based on the numeric result. Here you can evaluate criteria like impact on the expected results, feasibility, viability, capacity, and others.
• Quotations review. The quotes received when looking to buy a product or hire a service include numeric values like the product price, but there are other criteria to be evaluated when there is more than one option available. These criteria could be delivery time, warranty, credit line, product quality, and others.
• Tests results. When you run tests on persons to evaluate a level of knowledge in something like learning on a course, skills for a job, or any other functionality, you can have different criteria to be evaluated besides the answer to the questions. This kind of evaluation could include criteria like answer structure, context, grammar, and others.
• Housing options selection. Buy or rent a house is a decision that requires exploring several options in order to consider the one that is the most appropriate for personal interests. That’s why is valuable to create a ponderated evaluation about it with criteria like price, size, service accessibility, location, and others.

If you want to use a template for ponderated evaluations that are already created and configured with formulas to calculate the results, you can download this one that I created in Google Spreadsheet and is available to be used by everyone that needs it: Template for ponderated evaluations.

You can access to more free templates in the templates section of this site.

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