Player performance evaluation in rugby using Stochastic Multi-Criteria Acceptability Analysis with simplified uncertainty formats

Includes bibliographical references.This dissertation considers problem contexts in which decision makers are unable or unwilling to assess trade-off information precisely. The primary aim is to investigate the use of Stochastic Multi-criteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA) with simplified representations of uncertainty as a decision support tool for prescriptive modelling in 'low involvement' contexts such as these. A simulation experiment is used to assess (a) how closely a rank order of alternatives based on partial information and SMAA can approximate results obtained using full-information multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT), (b) whether a number of 'simplified' SMAA models which make use of summarised measures of uncertainty instead of a full probability distribution might also be suitable in certain contexts, and (c) which characteristics of the decision problem influence the accuracy of this approximation