An application of the analytic hierarchy process to the foreign students' integration analysis

We propose an application of the AHP process to analyze the complex and multidimensional phenomenon of foreign students’ school integration. A case study is presented in which, according to inquiries conducted with teacher’s interviews, an order of priorities is presented among n alternatives. The alternatives are ranked with the AHP procedure of Saaty. Starting from the definition of the general objective, foreign students’ school integration, the general objective has been divided into two sub-objectives the interpersonal communication and the degree of scholastic profit, and has been determined the weight for each sub-objective with respect to the general objective. Furthermore, with Saaty’s method, fuzzy weights of the variables that represent the phenomenon have been determined. The summary of the assessment made by the teachers was carried out considering for each pair of variables the geometric mean of the assessment and an uncertain multiplicative index of the assessments, for which a suitable formula has been determined. The group evaluations has been therefore represented by triangular fuzzy numbers.