by Katia Ernst | Jul 28, 2026 | Articles
The submission period has closed. The jury has been selected. Entries are rolling in. The next important step is scoring them. But how should that actually work?
This decision shapes the entire judging process. It influences who wins, how fair the process feels and how much trust entrants place in your program.
Too often, organisations simply default to whatever method they used last time, without asking whether it still fits the program in front of them.
There is no single right method. An innovation award with 500 entries requires a different approach than a people’s choice award for the most popular brand of the year. That is why it is important to understand the different judging approaches and know which method is best suited to each type of program.
Award programs vary significantly in their objectives, number of entrants and complexity of criteria. For this reason, the judging method should be chosen deliberately rather than simply adopted because it is familiar.
When the method does not fit the program, problems quickly emerge: judges apply criteria inconsistently, discussions arise around interpretation or the process becomes difficult to manage as submission volumes increase.
Sociologist Stacy Lom explored how evaluation practices develop and differ in her study “Judging by the Rules? The Emergence of Evaluation Practices”, which examined judging systems in figure skating and classical music.
Her research found that the more centralised and interconnected a competition system becomes, the more formalised and standardised its evaluation process tends to be. Independent, less connected programs, on the other hand, leave more room for individual evaluation and discussion among judges.
Applied to award programs, the lesson is clear: the structure and goals of a program should determine the scoring method, not the other way around.
With this method, judges evaluate each entry against predefined criteria such as innovation, execution and impact. Each criterion is assigned a weighting that reflects its importance within the overall assessment. The final score is calculated by combining the weighted scores for each criterion.
This approach is particularly suitable for programs with clearly defined professional requirements, such as innovation awards, sustainability awards or competitions in research and technology. It creates transparency and is easy to document, which is especially valuable when entrants have questions about the results.
The downside: it requires careful preparation. Criteria and weightings need to be thoughtfully designed and aligned with the jury. Otherwise, the results may become inconsistent or biased. In Award Force, this approach is represented by the VIP judging mode, where criteria and scoring scales can be fully configured, from numerical scores to recognition levels such as Gold, Silver and Bronze.
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Ranked choice voting, also known as Single Transferable Vote (STV), allows judges to rank candidates by preference rather than assigning scores. The method considers these preferences across multiple rounds to determine a result that better reflects the overall preferences of voters than a simple points-based system.
This approach works well when several options are relatively equal in quality and a single score cannot capture the complexity of the decision, such as selecting members for a panel or recognising individuals in personality awards with many strong candidates. STV reduces the influence of individual extreme ratings and encourages consensus-based decisions.
However, it can be less intuitive than direct scoring, both for entrants and sometimes for judges. Clear communication about how the results are calculated is therefore particularly important.
Instead of assigning scores, this method focuses on whether an entry meets a defined set of minimum requirements. There is no ranking involved, only a yes/no decision.
This approach is well suited for certification programs, accreditations or initial screening rounds where the goal is to confirm basic eligibility before moving on to a more detailed evaluation. It is simple to implement and leaves less room for interpretation, which can help improve consistency across multiple judges.
The challenge often lies in how the criteria are defined. If requirements are too vague, discussions about interpretation and fairness can still arise.
With public voting, the winners are chosen not by a professional jury but by the audience. Votes are typically submitted through an online voting process. This method is well suited for programs where awareness, popularity or community engagement are key objectives, such as people’s choice awards in marketing or media.
Public voting can significantly increase a program’s visibility and actively involve entrants, as they encourage their networks to take part in the voting process. At the same time, this approach comes with risks: attempts at manipulation through automated voting or vote buying are real concerns. Programs that use public voting therefore need reliable technical safeguards, such as mechanisms to detect bot traffic and prevent duplicate voting.
It is equally important to use a platform that meets high security and data privacy standards. Award Force supports this with features including multi-factor authentication, role-based access controls and a security architecture certified against internationally recognised standards.
In practice, many successful award programs combine multiple judging methods. A common approach is to use a pass/fail process in the first round to reduce the number of entries to a manageable level. A professional jury then evaluates the remaining candidates using weighted criteria, while public voting may be included as an additional factor or as a separate “People’s Choice Award” category.
Hybrid models offer flexibility and can be adapted to complex program structures. However, they require careful process planning to ensure that entrants and judges always understand which stage they are in and how the different evaluations contribute to the final results.
Internal Award Force platform data shows how common this approach has become:
72% of our customers now use a multi-stage judging process.
For most award programs, combining multiple methods is therefore no longer an exception but the standard approach.
We explore how quantitative and qualitative judging approaches can be combined effectively in our article on quantitative and qualitative evaluation.
Our platform data also confirms that many programs combine different judging methods in practice. Across all Award Force customers, the use of individual judging modes shows the following pattern: VIP judging, our implementation of weighted criteria scoring, is the most widely used approach. It is followed by Gallery mode, Qualification, our pass/fail judging method, Voting, our public voting mode, and Top Pick, our ranked choice voting method.
This distribution reflects what the method overview above suggests: structured criteria-based evaluation by a professional jury forms the foundation of the judging process for most programs, while screening, voting and ranking mechanisms are used as additional tools depending on the goals of the program.
Choosing the right method depends on several factors. The following questions can help guide your decision:
How many entries do you expect?For programs with a high number of submissions, an initial qualification round is often a good approach before moving to a more detailed criteria-based evaluation.
How similar are the entries?When submissions vary significantly across categories or formats, a weighted criteria approach with category-specific criteria often produces fairer results than a single scoring system applied to all entries.
How important is public visibility for your program?If reach and community engagement are key goals, adding a public voting component can be valuable, ideally alongside jury evaluation to ensure quality and credibility.
How experienced is your jury?New or rotating judges often benefit from clearly structured criteria with defined scales and guidance. Experienced juries may also work effectively with ranked choice approaches.
Another practical consideration is whether the judging method can be implemented efficiently from a technical perspective, without requiring your team to manually calculate scores in spreadsheets. A strong award scoring platform should support different judging methods and adapt to the structure of your program, from single-stage evaluations to complex multi-stage judging processes.
Award Force supports this range of judging approaches. The platform can be configured flexibly, allowing program managers to define their own criteria, weightings and judging stages while maintaining consistent security and data privacy standards for everyone involved.
Learn more about the technical foundations behind different judging modes and how to build effective multi-stage judging processes in our judging suite.
There is no universal scoring method that works for every award program. Weighted criteria scoring is ideal for professionally focused competitions with clearly defined requirements, ranked choice voting works well when multiple candidates are closely matched, pass/fail evaluation is effective for certification-style programs and public voting is a strong option when visibility and community engagement are central goals. Hybrid models bring these approaches together to create tailored solutions for more complex programs.
Choosing the right method starts with understanding your program’s goals and designing the judging process around them. Award Force helps program managers, judges and admin teams create evaluation processes that are fair, efficient and transparent, ensuring every award receives the recognition and trust it deserves.
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