education try to measure the skills of students in numeracy and literacy. Social
scientists themselves would be the first to concede that perfection in
measurement cannot ordinarily be achieved. Nevertheless they have made
some gains in devising reasonably valid and reliable tests for measuring many
characteristics.
Integrative Scales
One option, suggested by Professor Chapman, involves devising scales that
integrate multiple criteria in a manner that eliminates conflict between them.
381
Four means are suggested.
382
First, devise a weighing system to make a trade
off between the criteria (that is, to make them comparable). Second, make one
criterion dominant and the rest irrelevant or nearly so. Third, make a hierarchy
by ordering
the
criteria in lexical order. Thus
“criterion C1
is used to rank
options, C2 is then used to break ties between options that are equally good
under C1, C3 is used to break ties under C2, and so on”.
383
Fourth, combine
the criteria in a conceptual sequence.
Chapman’s own example involves a law school committee, which has to select
three incoming students for scholarships. First, the committee ranks “all the
students with respect to the criterion of financial need, then rank[s] the ten
neediest students with respect to the criterion of scholarly ability, and, finally,
rank[s] the five most scholarly of these ten with respect to community service.
The criteria of financial need, scholarly ability, and community service all
combine to determine which students get the scholarship.
384
Chapman actually
claims that
this process of "conceptual sequencing" is “embodied, and
justifiably so, in the choice procedures that adjudicatory bodies employ”
specifically in the doctrines of tort law, contract law, and criminal law.
385
Choosing for an Individual
Professor Richard Craswell makes a case that the problem of
incommensurability is reduced if not eliminated where government action
affects an individual with regard to something for which the individual
otherwise could have made a choice. This is the case where the government
chooses for the individual what the individual would have chosen anyway
given that they had proper information and a free choice. Even if the individual
could not justify their choice, the government removes any ground for
objecting to the choice on the basis that the individual would have made the
___________________
381
Chapman (1998) p 1487
382
These are summarised in Adler (1998A)
383
These are summarised in Adler (1998A)
384
These are summarised in Adler (1998A)
385
Chapman (1998) p 1487
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