Research in Decision Making


 

IDI conducts research on individual and group decision-making processes, decision-oriented methodologies, decision aids, human factors, and cognitive biases..

Examples of research capabilities include but are not limited to:

Decision-Making Processes

IDI leads and supports a variety of research studies aimed at understanding how decision-makers think and decide—in groups or as individuals.  For example, IDI has assisted research efforts in the field of critical thinking—a new approach to training decision-makers based on dialogue theory.  The research focused on how dialogue and critical thinking might be related -- people first learn to think critically by stating views to others, getting response, defending or rethinking. This is internalized as an inner dialogue. Group decision making makes the process external again. So, training in critical thinking dialogue procedures might improve both individual and collaborative process.

Decision Aids and Expert Systems

IDI researches and builds prototype decision aids and models.  As an example, IDI staff researched requirements for, and the feasibility of, developing a simulation tool that can be used to improve strategic decision analysis.  The result of the project was a concept definition of an improved simulation tool for use by strategic decision-makers that included the use of a multi-criteria decision aid (MCDA), decision trees, and dynamic Bayesian probability updating.

IDI staff also investigated a means to specify sets of inter-related, cross-functional information needs and their satisfaction criteria, and to automatically task and schedule cross-functional operations to best satisfy a specified set of user information needs using Bayesian inferential algorithms.