A method of assigning a global preference index

The issue of decision-making has been examined based on the preferences of the entire population, when the preferences of a few subpopulations varying significantly in size are known. The purpose of assigning global preferences according to the coefficients proposed here was to avoid marginalising the preferences of the smaller subpopulations. The preference coefficients for the population have been assigned using a weighted arithmetic mean, where the weights are the square roots of the sizes of the subpopulations. This is similar to the voting system known as the “Jagiellonian compromise”. The statistical properties of these constants were presented in the context of decision making. These results have been illustrated by way of an example where the subpopulations exhibit significant differences, viz. students’ choice of an economics university in Lower Silesia, Poland.