Accession Number:

ADA056921

Title:

Research on the Technology of Inference and Decision

Descriptive Note:

Final rept. 1 Oct 1976-30 Sep 1977

Corporate Author:

DECISIONS AND DESIGNS INC MCLEAN VA

Personal Author(s):

• Edwards, Ward
• John, Richard
• Stillwell, William

Report Date:

1977-11-01

Pagination or Media Count:

45.0

Abstract:

This report summarizes twelve months of research on the technology of inference and decision. Theoretical research and experimental work on three major topics elicitation of subjective probabilities, multi-attribute utility theory, and the application of decision technology, is discussed. Experimental work showed that simple averaging of individuals probability judgments to form a group judgment did not differ significantly from behavioral interaction in final quality of the judgments as evaluated by a quadratic scoring rule. Other experimental work indicated that elicitation techniques were of significant importance to the quality of judgments. Response scales were found to affect both the magnitude and veridicality of probabilistic judgment. In the assessment of subjective probability distributions elicitation technique was found to interact with the type of distribution used to generate the data in that biases introduced in subjective probability distributions varied as a function of the uncertain quantity being assessed.

Descriptors:

• *DECISION MAKING
• *DECISION THEORY
• BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES
• COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
• GROUP DYNAMICS
• HUMAN RELATIONS
• JUDGEMENT(PSYCHOLOGY)
• LEAST SQUARES METHOD
• MATHEMATICAL MODELS
• MONTE CARLO METHOD
• PROBABILITY DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS
• REGRESSION ANALYSIS
• REPORTS
• RESPONSE
• RISK
• SCALING FACTOR
• VALIDATION

Subject Categories:

• Administration and Management
• Operations Research

Distribution Statement:

APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE