Prominent psychometrician L. L. Thurstone first introduced a scientific approach to using pairwise comparisons for measurement in 1927, which he referred to as the law of comparative judgment.
Thurstone linked this approach to psychophysical theory developed by Ernst Heinrich Weber and Gustav Fechner.
Thurstone demonstrated that the method can be used to order items along a dimension such as preference or importance using an interval-type scale.
The simple logistic function varies by less than 0.01 from the cumulative normal ogive across the range, given an arbitrary scale factor.
Thurstone used the method of pairwise comparisons as an approach to measuring perceived intensity of physical stimuli, attitudes, preferences, choices, and values.
He also studied implications of the theory he developed for opinion polls and political voting (Thurstone, 1959).
However, transitivity will generally hold for a large number of comparisons if models such as the BTL can be effectively applied.
One important application of pairwise comparisons is the widely used Analytic Hierarchy Process, a structured technique for helping people deal with complex decisions.
It uses pairwise comparisons of tangible and intangible factors to construct ratio scales that are useful in making important decisions.
[5] The method involves the decision-maker repeatedly pairwise comparing and ranking alternatives defined on two criteria or attributes at a time and involving a trade-off, and then, if the decision-maker chooses to continue, pairwise comparisons of alternatives defined on successively more criteria.
From the pairwise rankings, the relative importance of the criteria to the decision-maker, represented as weights, is determined.