INVESTIGATION OF DECISION-MAKING PROCESS - A HYPERMEDIA APPROACH

Research in decision making has concentrated mainly on the decision ou tcome (choice) rather than on the process of the decision making. This pattern is primarily due to the lack of an acceptable unobtrusive too l for investigation of the decision process. Further, the lack of a co nsistent decision aid in empirical works has hindered the comparison o f results. The purpose of this paper is to present a flexible and adap table computer-based system for empirical examination of information p rocessing. The main thrust of the proposed system is to provide guidel ines to the restrictive/channeling approach to system design. This sys tem can be easily modified to suit different experimental research req uirements. It should support more realistic decision tasks, which ofte n are criticized in decision experiments. Furthermore, availability of this system should encourage more research work on the process of dec ision making. The nature of this support system is linked to the liter ature, and specifications and components of the system are provided. ( C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.