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Abstract: The Commitment among educational
stakeholderslead the enhancement of students achievement.
Theobligation to continuous school improvement is to identify
some effective strategists and focus on target areas of
improvement. Those action have aim to reduce number of
students who failed in national examination. There are some
evidences highlight regardingthe reason why students failed to
perform well in their study. Most student have lack of talent
and interest to the selected of field of study. As happened in
Mexico, South America, university students change their
major in the first year of study because initially they do not
have any guidelines of the appropriate field of study to be
chosen. Therefore, it is important to develop any guideline to
assist student to choose the potential field of study which is
related to their talent and interest. In this research, we develop
guidance for students in Senior High School in Indonesia to
choose an appropriate major related to personal interest using
Analitic Hierarchy Process (AHP).
Keywords:AHP; field of study; interest; ontology;
major.

1. INTRODUCTION
Interest areas in general are useful to help students to
streamline and focus in a certain field of study. Students
need engaging the special interest since earlier of study
period. Moreover, the educational stakeholders need to
contribute new ideas and programs which focused on
students progress and achievement. Besides that, the
effort is important to improve the opportunities and
options to shape students future. Additionally, learning
isalso need to be engaged with personal attention and that
meets students needs to make them actively involved to
set the goals. In fact, not everyone has the same interest,
therefore students should understand about what they want
in pursuing a major. Information and advice for students
as well as parents, faculty advisor and education
policymaker are the important things for students when
start to decide a particular major. There are many factors
are consider in choosing area of study, match it with
personality is the most important to get success for
future[1].In many schools, students have difficultiesto
choose an appropriate field of study. Most of them choose
a major based on examination result while others go
through familys pressure. Moreover, there are no
guidelines available to help students to choose the best
major. Questions will come over when decide a major. Is
this major better than others? or what should I do in the
future with this chosen major, may I struggle to move
ahead and success or reverse?. It is risky to let students to
choose the field without any assistance because some of
majors need special skill which is naturally owned only a
few of people[2]. Therefore, parents and society have
responsibility to give direction or create any guidelines for
students, so they will be able to shape the future in the
proper way. Choosing inappropriate field of study causes
many students to fail. For example, very talented man in
music area from Vietnam named Luong Bang Quang[3],
hechosen a field of study from parents expectation, it was
not related to his interest. Another case was happened in
University of California, Santa Barbara. Around 29%
students drop-out because they dont like school[4]. In
Mexico, South America, first year students in University
change their major because lack ofideas about the best
major should be chosen[5]. It is Important to help students
to figure out the interest and passion which reflect in the
process of selecting major at school. Many researchers
have studied to find solution for all these problems for
students, so they can enjoy their study. However, no
researches combine the criteria: major and reason of
choosing the interest. These researches considercombining
and ranking those criteria using Analytic Hierarchy
Process.
2. RELATED WORK
Learning is a varied experience for all children as a
student since they have different personal skills and self-
awareness levels for specific field of study. This case
becomes popular among researchers to discover the
solution on how to help students to find the right potential.
2.1 Determined the Students Major
Several papers have focused on importance of choosing a
major for future. Some of them are paying attention on
income or future career. Many people believe that major
will determine what they do for the rest of
life[6].Oehrleinsaid that some majors lead to higher
incomes than others and students can get more success by
choosing those majors [7].
Other researchers initiate that selecting a major for
students primarily based on their interested subject. As
AHP APPLICATION TO DEFINE THE POTENTIAL
FIELD OF STUDY FOR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL
STUDENTS

SantyArbi A Mappe1, Pornpit Wongthongtham2

1,2Curtin University, School of Information System,

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Arcidiacono[8] in his research using dynamic model found
that most of students primarily choose a major based on
what subject they are interested in rather than ability level
or career. However, to select the appropriate field of study,
factors as mentioned above are not proper since it is need
to weight of all the possible majors. In this paper, beside
the criteria based on interest, the probable field of study
also will be rank using a particular method.
2.2 Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) approach
The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was developed by
Saaty, commonly used to evaluate the weights of criteria
and alternative with rating scale: very much important,
rather more important, as important, and so on. It is a
multi-criteria decision method derived from solid
axiomatic foundation[9]. All the alternative elements that
involved in decision making will be ranked using criteria
to know the achieving over the goal.

Figure 1: Pairwise comparison matrix
This method is well known by researchers and used to
solve many problems in different areas. In education, Bikse
has used AHP method to evaluate the development of
career education in Latvia[10]. Biksesresearch proposed a
development scenario to enhance students attention in
career of education. There are 3 criteria in 1st level was
developed in the approach such as school interest, labor
market and state or regional as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Criteriahierarchy in career education
by Bikse[10]
Another research also conducted in education area was
doing by Lee. The research focused on the using of
fuzzy AHP to formulate the intellectual capital
indicators to be used in evaluation model as decision
guidelines[11]

Figure 3: Conceptual framework for integrate
the intellectual capital by Lee [11].
2.3 Factors to Identify Interest
Interest related to personal strength when it is considered
and explored optimally. Identify the interest will help
students to get perspective on their skills, abilities and
potential[12]. Number factors are determined affect to
child circumstances but best interest become the best
suited to take into consideration[13]. However, best
interest determination must be analyzed by consider the
several factors below[13]:
[1]. The emotional bonds between parents and children
[2]. Parents welfare
[3]. The child wishes
[4]. State/ government protection
[5]. Mental and physical health of parents and children
[6]. The possibilities of domestic violence at home.
In other hand, Government of Canada believe that to
capture the interest of students, they must answer questions
related to[12]:
- The potential area
- The thing that students care about
- things are like to be done in spare time
- subjects favored
- the most interesting thing
- the most preferred thing at school
- kind of help that most often given to others
2.4 The Development of AHP Hierarchy Model
Determine the appropriate field of study for students is a
dynamic and complex thing to do. Due to many factors and
indicators to be considered to get the right potential major.
Method to analyze and its effectiveness is strongly needed
to comprises a goal. Analytic HierarchyProcess is a model
derived by Saatyconsists procedural steps to solve the
evaluation problem.The problem will be structured as a
multicriteria hierarchy based on comparable preference of
alternatives/criteriawhich is usinghuman perception.

Figure 4:Simple tree of multicriteria[14]
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The offered approach is allows structuring factors
considered in choosing particular major in senior high
school. The hierarchy of the career education system was
formed using AHP with the following stages[14] :
1) Define the problem as goal to be solve and set the
objectives.
2) Decide the criteria and structure it into the decision
hierarchy from that goal as a broad prospective.
3) Using pair of comparison method, fill the matrices of
criteria. Rate each potential choice relative to each
other on the basis of each selection criteria to result
pairwise comparisons of the choices.
4) Combine the ratings to obtained relative rating for each
potential choice.
As mentioned in point 1, the problem in this
research is to find the potential field of study for students.
Therefore, the goal is to determine the best major or the
appropriate field of study.Furthermore draw the criteria of
hierarchy which offers 3possible levels.

Selectamajor
FamilysHistory FamiliarwithMajor CareerOpportunities
Natural Science
Social Science ArtandLanguage

Figure 5: Multi hierarchy level for field of study
Recognition
As shown above, the goal of the research is to help
students to determine the best potential field of study.
1st level :aim of the project
2nd level:criteria - sub criteria : it is related to interest,
what factors are affecting students to choose a certain
major. In this part, we determine 3 factors as sub criteria,
such as familys history, familiar with major and career
opportunity.

3rd level Majors offered for students. There are 3 kind of
major offered such as Natural Science, Social Science and
Art & Language. The elements of criteria is structuring
into a matrix M[i,j] as shown in Table 2.

3. Deriving Prioritiesamong Criterion
As explain above, there are steps required in multi criteria
decision making using AHP. After set the goal and
criteria, then set priorities and allocate resources which
have to rank and select among the alternatives. To
accomplish this, weight the developed criteria. The more
important a criteria, the higher weight it has. Deriving
weight of all criteria with interpretation of qualitative
factors, AHP provide the analytical method to rank each
criterion by conducting the pair wise comparison scale as
shown in table .In this part, we would like to rank the
elements of criteria which is given in this research.
Generically, in AHP method, we have to rank one criterion
to another.
Natural Science vs. Social Science
Natural Science vs. Art & Language
Social Science vs. Art & Language
To rank the criteria, we have to predict whether one
criteria is more important than others or less important (or
effective, likely, preferred)[15]. The judgment scale is
based on qualitative description.

Moreover, all the criteria will be rank using Saaty rating
scale as an example below, if a student want to choose a
field of study.


Table 2. Express paired comparisons among criterion,
thenwould like to compare each criteria with scale of major
choices. Each criterion is judging to determine the ranking
of them.As shown in table 2. it is clear that the
information gathered are:
- familys story is 5 times important as career opportunity
- career opportunity is 2 times important as familiar with
major
- family history is 3 times more important thanfamiliarwith
major
In addition each alternative will be compared also using
pairwise comparison in terms of each criterion.

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Table 6: Pairwise of Alternative Majors to Career
Opportunity


Table 7: Pairwise of Alternative Majors to Familiar with
Major

4. Evaluation the Criteria for Field Of
Study Selection
The hierarchy evaluation is based on pairwise
comparisons.The decision is attained by compares each
weight of alternatives with respect to specific
criterion.Therefore, all the criterion and alternative will be
analyzed to find the best choice among 3 selected majors:
natural science, social science and art &language. Firstly,
eigenvector is the approach as a solution to rank all the
criteria from a pairwise matrix.
Table 8: Pairwise of Criteria Matrix

Next, the numbers will be converted to decimal and formed
as a CM matrix.
CM =

EigenVector is
Lambdamax =3.0715
CI =0.02382
CR =0.00614
Ratio consistency is
Therefore, the tree with the criteria weight can be seen in
Figure 5. Below.

Figure 6: Three of criteria with weight
Moreover, in terms of each criterion, pairwise comparisons
determine preference of each alternative over another. In
terms of familys history
Table 9: Pairwise Comparisons of Alternatives in Terms
of Family History

Formed as a matrix

FH =

Result eigenvector :
Eigenvector for FH =

Computing the eigenvector determines the relative ranking
of alternatives under each criterion. Based on eigenvector,
in terms of familys history, we can rank:

Ranking familys history

1 Natural science

2 Social science
3 Art& Language.
In terms of career opportunity
Table 10: Pairwise Comparisons of Alternatives
InTerms of Career Opportunity

Formed as a matrix
CO =

Result eigenvector:
Eigenvector for CO =

Ranking familys history
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1 Natural science

2 Social science
3 Art& Language.
In terms of familiar with major
Table 11: Pairwise Comparisons of Alternatives
InTerms of Familiar Major

Formed as a matrix
FM =
Result eigenvector:
Eigenvector for FM =

Ranking familys history
2 Natural science

1 Social science
3 Art& Language.
The tree with all the weights

Figure 7: Rank of alternatives per criteria
The final result of the best field of study issquaring the
eigenvector of criteria with the eigenvector matrix of all
the alternatives.

*

=
Ranking of majors
1 .5375 natural science (the best major to be choose)
2.3155 social sciences
3 .1109 arts& language
The weight result of majors shows that for this particular
data, the best choice of student is natural science.
4. Conclusion
The AHP have been proved as the selection process is
very fairly simple to apply. It is flexible, leading approach
used multi criteria decision making and can use one
multi-dimensional matrix data as input.This research
AHP approach with 3 criteria: familys history, career
opportunity and art & language havebeen proposed to
copes the ability to help students to choose the appropriate
field of study. It is not only help parents and school to
give the right reference for students, but also help the
government generally since it encourage the development
the potential of human resource properly.This research is
only give one of example of data input, and the result only
for the particular data. It does not provide the detail of
input form for students.However; the criteria and
alternatives are presented clearly which possible to be
used to developinput form for future
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