ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF DECISIONAL GUIDANCE

The objective of this study was to determine the impact on decision ma kers of two forms of computer support suggestive guidance and informat ive guidance - on the problem formulation stage of judgmental tasks. T hree hypotheses were postulated regarding the effectiveness of these t wo forms of guidance. The three hypotheses were tested in two experime nts comprising two judgmental tasks of differing complexity. The task performance of 282 subjects provided the basis for the assessment of t he two forms of computer support. In the first experiment, which had t he less complex task, we found that the availability of DSS improved t ask performance. In this scenario, suggestive guidance was found to en able subjects to perform significantly better than those subjects usin g informative guidance, However, in the second experiment, which had t he more complex task, subjects using informative guidance outperformed those who were either supported with a suggestive guidance or who rec eived no-DSS support at all (i.e., only pencil and paper was used). No significant difference was demonstrated to exist between those who we re supported with suggestive guidance and those who were not supported with DSS, The results are analyzed with respect to current findings i n decision research.