Current reforms emphasize the development of scientific literacy as the
principal goal of science education. The nature of science is considered a critical
component of scientific literacy and is assumed to be an important factor in decision
making on science and technology based issues. However, little research exists that
delineates...
Published January 1973. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Instructional time for social studies in elementary classrooms has decreased
since the passage of Goals 2000 and No Child Left Behind, with content contracted to align with reading goals. Consequently, opportunities for preservice teachers to observe and teach social studies lessons have diminished. This qualitative multiple case study examines the...
Research in the aviation domain, driving distractions, anesthesia
administration, and nuclear power plant control rooms show that Concurrent Task
Management (CTM) is a process that every human operator performs when
interacting with complex environments. The need for understanding concurrent task
management in a broader perspective more applicable and generalizable to...
Concurrent Task Management (CTM) can be defined as the process that human operators of complex systems perform to allocate their attention among multiple, simultaneous tasks. A challenge of CTM research is to create an experimental environment which is complex enough to model a real world multitasking situation. Also, this system...
An extensive literature survey investigated methods and approaches
for evaluating intangible economic factors at the strategic
and tactical levels of managerial decision making. These sources
provided: 1) the background for a theoretical decision making
algorithm developed for comparing alternative economic proposals
for effectiveness at the strategy levels, and 2) a...
Research suggests that entrepreneurs tend to seek to maximize utility when considering whether to pursue a new venture opportunity. However, when choosing whether to persist with their current venture or not, utility maximization may not be of primary importance. Using a conjoint experiment, we examine the difference between policies in...
Natural resource decisions require consideration at many levels, ranging from how one invertebrate will be affected by a nearby road, to how an entire watershed will be transformed by a massive clearcut. Considerations reach farther than just the local ecological community-human communities, economies, and future impacts on the communities and...
Management decisions are generally considered to be made
under one of three categories of future knowledge: certainty, risk,
or uncertainty. All three categories occur in forest management.
However, forest management decisions whose outcomes are dependent
upon future levels of timber yields, prices, utilization standards,
or social and legal institutions are...
Occurrence of human error in highly complex systems, such as a cockpit, can be disastrous and/or overwhelmingly costly. Mismanagement of multiple concurrent tasks has been observed by researchers to be a type of repetitive human error in previous studies of accidents and incidents. This error may occur in the form...
The behavior of individuals in decision making under risk was
investigated using choice structures of greater complexity than the
types examined in previous studies. The experiment performed consisted
of two phases. In Phase I a basic utility function for money
was derived for each subject using lotteries with two equally...
Twenty managers of large diversified irrigated farms in the Willamette Valley area of Oregon were interviewed about the economic information and analysis techniques they use when making crop selection decisions. Two community college farm management instructors, two agricultural lenders, and two certified public accountants working with farmers were interviewed about...
Numerous analytical aids are available to apple producers to assist them in the decision problem of choosing among alternative apple harvesting systems. However, a majority of these techniques
fail to recognize the effect of apple orchard yield variability on system performance and economic efficiency. Furthermore, many of the suggested procedures...
Decision-making in environmental management is complex due to the multiplicity arid diversity of management objectives and technological choices. This suggests that modelers and experts could utilize (I) multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches to assist stakeholder groups in integrating and synthesizing relevant data and information to address ecological and socio-economic concerns and...
An Engineering Decision Support System, EDSS, was developed using Bayesian mathematics which incorporates knowledge and confidence components observed in alternative-criterion pair decision making. The separation of knowledge and confidence has been previously unaccounted for in decision-making methods. EDSS provides decision support to individuals or teams which must make choices between...
This research explores the hypothesis that methods from decision theory and machine learning can be combined to provide practical solutions to current manufacturing control problems. This hypothesis is explored by developing an integrated approach to solving one manufacturing problem - the optimization of die-level functional test.
An integrated circuit (IC)...
Two interesting challenges have been created in the traditional transportation planning process through recent adoption of more interactive roles by Federal, State and local transportation agencies and of those representing the communities being impacted by proposed transportation projects. First, the decision-making groups that formerly included solely transportation and related professionals...
The complexity of forest management has increased with the scope of resources of concern and the level of scrutiny from stakeholders. The design and use of specialized computer software, often referred to as “decision support systems” (DSS), is one method for helping managers deal with this complexity. DSS have proven...
The creation of autonomous decision makers to handle potentially hazardous or logistically complicated tasks is desirable for the purpose of reducing human labor and exposure to risk, and for increasing the general performance of autonomous systems in a wide variety of environments. However, traditional autonomous decision makers perform poorly when...
A decision support system (DSS) incorporating domain
expertise guides, tutors, and consults a decision maker in
opportunity, problem, and crisis identification activities. The
objective for the system is to promote improved decision making.
Using an "Independent Groups" design, an experimental study was
conducted to investigate the effects of DSS use...
This research investigated the relationship of
predisposing attributes of preretirees to the perceived
importance of locational preferences during the first ten
years of retirement. Multiple regression analyses and a
Chi-square test were used to determine if seven predisposing
attributes were related to ten locational preferences. Data
were analyzed from a...
The purpose of this study is to use an integrated biocultural perspective to examine the decision-making processes of young survivors as they navigate breast cancer treatment and reproductive health care options. This retrospective study utilizes a mixed-methods approach that integrates quantitative survey data (Phase I) with interview (Phase II) and...
Published April 1973. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
Multiobjective Decision Making (MODM) has been
suggested for the solution of complicated decision
problems. Decision analysis in numerous areas, including
industrial energy and environmental planning, necessarily
requires consideration of multiple conflicting
objectives. MODM has been successfully applied to
a number of these problems of this type. Moreover, it
has the...
Although there are no easy answers to the nursing home decision, this publication gives some guidelines for making decisions, assessing family and community resources, selecting a quality care facility, and dealing with your feelings and those of your older relative. It also looks at ways to maintain positive contact with...
Many Departments of Transportation (DOTs) have done construction and maintenance work at night in order to minimize the disruption of daytime traffic, but nighttime operations produce a new set of concerns such as safety, public relations, productivity, and work quality. In addition, decision-making for using nighttime operations has been subjective...
Sustainability has been the focus of intense discussions over the past two decades, with topics around the entire product life cycle. In the manufacturing phase, research has been focused solely on environmental impact assessment or environmental impact and cost analysis in its assessment of sustainability. However, few efforts have investigated...
Published October 1991. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog
This dissertation serves a threefold purpose: 1. identify the principles, practices and assumptions implicated in an academic theory of social justice; 2. continue moving towards articulating a theory of social justice judgment and decision making; and 3. develop a model of social justice judgment and decision making that will assist...
A composite system of a Markovian Decision Process
with multiple criteria involves both discounting criteria
and nondiscounting criteria. The measurement of the
discounting criteria is chosen to be the total sum of
the payoffs over the time horizon and the measurement of
the non-discounting criteria is chosen to be the...
In Japan, common fishery rights are granted by prefectural governor only to local fisheries cooperative associations (FCAs). Coastal resources like abalones are utilized by local fishers as members of FCAs. Fishery rights are deemed to be real rights and any person encroaching upon this right is subject to fine. Therefore,...
Knowledge-Based Model Construction (KBMC) has generated a lot of attention
due to its importance as a technique for generating probabilistic or decision-theoretic
models whose range of applicability in AI has been vastly increased. However, no
one has tried to analyze the essential issues in KBMC, to determine if there exists...
Co-management is considered an alternative approach to fisheries management,
however, not all co-managed fisheries have been successful. Most studies discussing the
success and failure of co-management have emphasized economic and social attributes of
success and failure, such as fishery rights and institutional arrangements. The effect on
co-management of biological characteristics,...
In this ethnographic study, I examine how women living in downstate Illinois decide to give birth at home. I view decision-making as a process that unfolds throughout pregnancy and continues into the postpartum period, contextualizing "choice" in a region where homebirth is a politically and socially marginalized practice. The methodology...
Risk is a crucial decision factor besides traditional cost and performance during collaborative decision making in a distributed environment. Three main challenges exist: 1) stakeholders' different perspectives and/or diverse cultures can lead to inconsistent risk probability evaluations; 2) risk consequence is hard to be quantified in concrete unit; 3) risk...
This thesis compares two methods for studying the problem-solving processes of
mechanical design engineers. The first method, verbal protocol analysis, was applied
by L. Stauffer to construct a problem-solving model of mechanical design. The
second method, timing analysis, measures the time intervals separating drawing or
speaking actions during the design...
Individuals with mild developmental disabilities have
traditionally been excluded from full participation in
their career decision making due to the stereotyping of
their perceived incompetence. This view forms a mind-set
or stigma that is recognized as the disability myth.
This study initially addressed the vocational
development of individuals with mild...
The decision sequences used for troubleshooting of complex electro-mechanical systems are often ad hoc and less than optimal. This research investigated Decision Analysis and Bayesian Networks for generating an optimal decision sequence for troubleshooting. The model that was used in this research was the bleed air control system of the...
Past afforestation programs launched to promote private and community woodlots in rural Ethiopia have not been based on clear understanding of the incentives and constraints of smallholder farmers. This study investigated the characteristic differences between tree-growing and non-tree-growing farm households and identified factors influencing farmers’ tree-growing decisions from a farming...
In 1995, Oregon introduced the Oregon Plan for Salmon and Watersheds (formerly the Oregon Coho Salmon Recovery Initiative; OCRSI), a statewide cooperative effort between government and citizens. The Oregon Plan promotes voluntary and locally determined salmonid and watershed restoration initiatives. Watershed councils - groups comprised of citizens, federal and state...
The EBM model of consumer decision making was used to guide the present study. According to this model when consumers make purchase decisions, they search for information from either internal and/or external sources. When consumers do not have enough information from internal sources, such as knowledge and experiences, they search...
Current life cycle assessment tools are often deficient in assisting design for sustainable manufacturing efforts. Integrating an improved assessment method into a decision support framework will provide a means for designers and engineers to better understand the impacts of their decisions. A unit process modeling-based sustainability assessment method is presented...
Building intelligent computer assistants has been a long-cherished goal of AI. Many intelligent assistant systems were built and fine-tuned to specific application domains. In this work, we develop a general model of assistance that combines three powerful ideas: decision theory, hierarchical task models and probabilistic relational languages. We use the...
While many organizations claim to "put safety first," safety is rarely considered early in the design process when system-level architectural decisions are made. Instead, system design follows an abstraction-to-detail process to first meet functional and then performance requirements. Following this process, safety assurance occurs in the later stages of design...
The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA) is considered by many to be among the most powerful and most contentious environmental laws in the United States. Persistent challenges to the Act’s implementation make reaching conservation goals problematic. Most notably, the very nature of the law—providing protections for species already at...
Writing a program that performs well in a complex environment is a challenging task. In such problems, a method of deterministic programming combined with reinforcement learning (RL) can be helpful. However, current systems either force developers to encode knowledge in very specific forms (e.g., state-action features), or assume advanced RL...
Health care providers, including complementary and alternative medical (CAM) practitioners, exert a significant influence on parental pediatric vaccination decisions. Use of CAM therapies is increasing in Oregon. Concomitantly, there has been a decade-long increase in parental vaccine refusal in Oregon, rising from 1 to 5 percent from 2000-2009. For example,...
Markov Decision Process (MDP) is a well-known framework for devising the optimal decision making strategies under uncertainty. Typically, the decision maker assumes a stationary environment which is characterized by a time-invariant transition probability matrix. However, in many real-world scenarios, this assumption is not justified, thus the optimal strategy might not...
In this paper a data envelopment model is presented to evaluate short term investment decisions in the Dutch beam trawl and demersal fleet. We investigated how short run profit drives investment decisions and how a data envelopment analysis can be used to show what the optimal level of capital use...
Changes in work and family roles as more women are
entering the work force prompt a re-examination of how
couples make work and family decisions. Research confirms
that influence is an important component of the decision-making
process. Because of the recent changes in women's
paid work roles, women may now...
This paper investigates the feasibility of compiling the functionality of a decision
theoretic problem solving engine into a set of rules or functionally similar construct.
The decision theoretic engine runs in exponential time, while the rule set runs in
linear time at worst. The main question that will determine the...
Quality Capability Self-diagnosis is a convenient and
economical way to assess the performance of an operating
quality system, as well as a basis for initiating necessary
corrective actions essential to quality improvement and
preparation for certification. This paper describes the
research leading to the development of a cost-effective and
systematic...
A gap exists in the methods used in industry and available in academia that prevents customers and engineers from having a voice when considering engineering risk appetite in the dynamic shaping of early-phase conceptual design trade study outcomes. Current methods used in Collaborative Design Centers either collect risk information after...
Economic, environmental, social and political influences made the management of
solid waste or garbage an important issue for all foodservice directors, including those
in health care facilities. The study objectives were to: (1) identify what components
of integrated waste management programs were being used in hospital foodservice
facilities in Oregon,...
The purpose of the study was to determine if a model
could be created which would describe and prescribe a superior
method for strategic problem solving in the community
college. A review of the literature in business and industry
was used to extrapolate a model which might describe the
decision...
Objectives The purpose of this study was to investigate the need for a technology acquisition tool to be used in the capital purchasing process in health care organizations.
Design Multi-method approach consisting of interviews of ten executives of health care organizations. A written survey was then mailed to Chief Executive...
A large number of sequential decision-making problems in uncertain environments
can be modeled as Markov Decision Processes (MDPs). In such settings, an agent
can observe at each time step the state of the environment and then executes an
action, causing a stochastic transition to a new state of the environment...
Improving the quality of the medical system has always been of great importance but has not always made the largest advances. A significant percentage of medical errors are due to wrong, missed, or delayed medical diagnosis. Diagnostic errors are among the most preventable categories of medical errors, but when an...
Modern commercial air travel is considered by most transportation specialists to be the safest of all forms of transportation. While safe, any loss of life is tragic and the only really acceptable state of commercial air transport safety is that of 'zero-tolerance' where no accident is acceptable.
Research has demonstrated...
Modern civil commercial transport aircraft provide the means for the safest of all forms of transportation. While advanced computer technology ranging from flight management computers to warning and alerting devices contributed to flight safety significantly, it is undisputed that the flightcrew represents the most frequent primary cause factor in airline...
Acting intelligently to efficiently solve sequential decision problems requires the ability to extract hierarchical structure from the underlying domain dynamics, exploit it for optimal or near-optimal decision-making, and transfer it to related problems instead of solving every problem in isolation. This dissertation makes three contributions toward this goal.
The first...
Bayesian networks are used for building intelligent agents that act under uncertainty. They are a compact representation of agents' probabilistic knowledge. A Bayesian network can be viewed as representing a factorization of a full joint probability distribution into the multiplication of a set of conditional probability distributions. Independence of causal...
A fundamental problem that emerges during the planning of a city or neighborhood is how to prioritize sustainable development criteria and where to focus efforts. Solving this problem is a complex task requiring an integrated approach, which considers environmental, economic, and social criteria, as well as stakeholder preferences. Given the...
The objective of this study was to develop a decision making tool to determine economic feasibility of artisan cheese operations. A survey of current Oregon artisan cheese companies was used to gain knowledge of the fixed and variable costs associated with cheese production and business start-up. The data from this...
The extent in which the evangelical Christian perspective influenced the career decision-making self-efficacy of six female college students was qualitatively explored. Interviews and a focus group were utilized to find common themes and influences amongst the women. Literature from the areas of female college student development, career decision-making self-efficacy, and...
Achieving and maintaining sustainability in irrigated agriculture production in the era of rapidly increasing stress on our natural resources require, among other essential actions, optimum control and management of the applied water. Thus, a significant upgrade of the currently available soil water monitoring technologies is needed. The primary goal of...
The Type-II dilemma zone refers to the segment of roadway approaching an
intersection where drivers have difficulty deciding to stop or proceed through at
the onset of the circular yellow (CY) indication. Signalized intersection safety can
be improved when the dilemma zone is correctly identified and steps are taken to...
Many contemporary fisheries and wildlife issues are complex, messy, and divisive. Most share a set of common characteristics including a lack of comprehensive scientific information, a limited understanding of biological processes, a scarcity of agency staff, time, money, and a tendency for differences over policy preferences to end up as...
This work is inspired by problems in natural resource management centered on the challenge of invasive species. Computing optimal management policies for maintaining ecosystem sustainable is challenging. Many ecosystem management problems can be formulated as MDP (Markov Decision Process) planning problems. In a simulator-defined MDP, the Markovian dynamics and rewards...
Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) are the de-facto formalism for studying sequential decision making problems with uncertainty, ranging from classical problems such as inventory control and path planning, to more complex problems such as reservoir control under rainfall uncertainty and emergency response optimization for fire and medical emergencies. Most prior research...
More than 1500 species of plants and animals in the United States are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The U.S. Departments of Interior and Commerce are required, under Section 4(f)(1) of the ESA, to develop recovery plans for ESA-listed species under the respective agency...
Manufacturing industry drives economic activity and growth around the world, but manufacturing activities consume large amounts of material, energy, and labor resources. Therefore, the impacts of manufacturing need to be accounted for and reduced. Direct benefits of manufacturing are products and income, which, in turn, influence the lives of people...
Traffic signal countdown timers (TSCT) are innovative, practical and cost effective technologies with the potential to improve efficiency and safety at signalized intersections. The purpose of these devices is to assist motorists in decision making at signalized intersections with real time signal change information. While successful implementation of these devices...
The Run-Ahead Predictive Simulation Software (RAPSS) is an architecture designed for faster-than-real-time decision support for operators of complex networks. To enable further development of the RAPSS methodology, the necessary proof of principle is illustrated in two applications: decision support for shift technical advisors in nuclear power plant control rooms (RAPSS-STA),...
It has been suggested that projects in the construction industry are subject to risks more than other industries. However, there is often little parity in allocation of risks in the construction industry. Usually, project participants allocate risks by aversion where owners tend to shift risks to the primary contractor, who...
This paper studies the problem of learning diagnostic policies from training examples. A diagnostic policy is a complete description of the decision-making actions of a diagnostician (i.e., tests followed by a diagnostic decision) for all possible combinations of test results. An optimal diagnostic policy is one that minimizes the expected...
This investigation of secondary geometry teachers'
decision making in a mathematics curricular reform context
examined the following questions: (a) What planning and
interactive decisions were secondary geometry teachers
making during this time of reform, and (b) what factors
influenced the decisions that these teachers made? In
addition, comparisons were generated...
This study was designed to discover how beneficiary participation in decision making can be encouraged and enhanced in rural development assistance projects in developing countries. The study sought to increase the understanding about how beneficiary participation occurs through the identification of patterns, processes or techniques in development assistance projects that...
Increased global competition is forcing organizations to increase their use of group decision making today. Computerized group decision support aids (CGDSAs) are being developed to improve the efficiency of these groups and to improve decision quality. Even though the use of CGDSAs has increased, very little research has been done...
The work upon which this publication is based was supported by funds provided by the United States Department of the Interior as authorized under the Water Resources Research Act of 1964, as amended. OWRR Project No. B-016-ORE.
The focus of this study is the effective prioritization of customer requirements in collaborative product development. The CR priorities are often retrieved by questioning and interviewing targeted customers. But the targeted customer might not always be easily questioned, because they might not always be obvious or clearly known. If customers...
Task prioritization performance was evaluated for pilots who participated in a concurrent task management (CTM) training course and pilots who did not. CTM is the process by which pilots selectively attend to high priority tasks and shed non-priority tasks. Twenty seven pilots enrolled in a university flight technology program were...
Concurrent Task Management (CTM) is the process by which human operators of complex systems (such as pilots, drivers, surgeons, and operators) allocate their attention among multiple concurrent tasks (Funk, 1991). A more thorough understanding of the human operator's knowledge, skills, and
abilities associated with CTM might help us to prevent...
The purpose of this study is to determine the socioeconomic
factors which influence the profitability and
adoption of new cropping patterns, and to recommend
suitable measures to enhance the crop diversification
program in Mahaweli System B, Sri Lanka. The adoption of
new cropping patterns is determined by a number of...
The increasing popularity of catalog shopping has prompted many retailers to enter the market. Consequently, competition among catalog retailers has escalated. To maintain or expand their customer bases, catalog retailers must now find better ways to serve consumers. Many consumers are apprehensive to shop for apparel via catalog because they...
Western society's ongoing cultural shift toward quality of life values and associated increased public participation expectations affects forest managers. The rapid urban growth experienced by the U.S. is increasing both the area of the urban-forest interface zone and the number of residents residing in that zone. The study site of...
This thesis examines the application of findings from the social psychological field of
procedural justice to public involvement in natural resource decision making. The
methodological approach involves examining the literature of each of the fields and
developing a synthesis applicable to public involvement. The review of public involvement
literature reveals...
The prioritization of road maintenance projects is an important forest engineering
task subject to limited budgets and competing investment needs. Large investments are made each year to maintain and upgrade forest road networks to meet economic and environmental goals. Many models and guidelines are available for single-criterion analysis of forest...
The purpose of the present study was to determine consumer perceptions of apparel products in Internet shopping. According to the existing literature, four categories of perceptions play primary roles for apparel shopping consumer decisions: apparel appearance, apparel comfort, fabric characteristics, and apparel fit. The present study aimed to observe how...
Shaped by life course and feminist perspectives, this study investigated the influence of finances, human capital, health, family situations, and work factors on two different retirement transitions among married and partnered men and women. Because women and men arrive at retirement under different life circumstances, logistic regression analyses were conducted...
The basic objectives of this project can be stated as follows:
1. To test a methodology for improving the quality of impact statement content;
2. To provide opportunity for local participation in project design and decision making;
3. To provide more efficient procedures for complying with impact statement laws, thereby...
Production planning in fish processing is heavily dependent on the raw material supply. Because of the uncertainties associated with the quantity of catch and its composition, planning for production is a difficult task. Until recently the fish processing plants in Iceland also had to accept the entire loads of fishing...
This thesis addresses the issue of comfortable and functional living environments to provide seniors with opportunities for "age in place," that is, living in one's own house after retirement. Such living environments enhance seniors' life satisfaction since the majority of seniors prefer to stay in their own houses and live...
Two essays are focused on crop choice and the growth of corn production in
the Corn Belt and surrounding areas. The first essay develops a partially
degenerate nested logit model to examine the effect of price islands and local
ethanol capacity on corn production and crop mix. The primary data...
Degradation of watersheds is a major concern in areas where adverse climate effects and unsustainable use of the natural resources have caused extensive stresses to watershed systems (e.g., increased floods, increased droughts, worsened in-stream water quality) through the years. While considerable efforts are being made to generate technical solutions that...
Funk’s (1991) cockpit task management (CTM) theory is structurally consistent with cognitive multitasking models: it addresses managing multiple and concurrent tasks in three stages: situation awareness, response selection, and response execution. Based on CTM theory, Colvin, Funk and Braune (2005) hypothesized that the following six factors may affect task prioritization:...
In its simplest form, the process of diagnosis is a decision-making process in which the diagnostician performs a sequence of tests culminating in a diagnostic decision. For example, a physician might perform a series of simple measurements (body tem- perature, weight, etc.) and laboratory measurements (white blood count, CT scan,...
Published April 1963. Facts and recommendations in this publication may no longer be valid. Please look for up-to-date information in the OSU Extension Catalog: http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog