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...