GDSS DOES NOT GUARANTEE EQUAL PARTICIPATION

Group decision support systems (GDSS) provide forums capable of reduci ng group process loss and of allowing equal participation. The design of GDSS provides conditions necessary to produce equal participation, but a forum does not ensure equal participation. Reducing group proces s loss increases the number of comments produced by groups using GDSS. Participants producing more comments did not lead to a uniform distri bution of the number of comments. Our study, also, investigated quanti ty of comments produced by participants with some self-reported measur es of participation. We found participation was associated with ''talk ativeness''.