Description:

This Master Prompt would focus on identifying, screening, defining and organizing the criteria and subcriteria required to represent the decision problem adequately. It would guide researchers in deriving criteria from literature, theories, standards, empirical evidence, expert consultation, Delphi studies, stakeholder engagement or combinations of these sources and in constructing a logically defensible hierarchical structure connecting the overall goal to criteria, subcriteria and alternatives.

A major emphasis would be placed on ensuring that criteria are relevant, interpretable, sufficiently distinct and appropriately positioned within the hierarchy. Researchers would examine redundancy, overlap, missing dimensions and excessive complexity before comparisons are performed. The Master Prompt would also guide researchers in documenting why particular criteria were included or excluded and producing a transparent Goal → Criteria → Subcriteria → Alternatives hierarchy. The literature includes three-tier AHP models and applications in which main factors are decomposed into multiple subfactors, demonstrating that hierarchy construction is itself a substantive methodological activity rather than merely a diagramming exercise.