Fundamentals
  • Items in this section provide some of the background and theory behind MCDA-based decision support in general and DecisionALs specifically. They often go beyond simple clarification of a term, concept, theory or activity to introduce our perspective in relation to it and the implications of the resulting interpretation.

Showing 1-10 of 13 results

What is descriptivism?

Making decisions about prescription drugs: A study of doctor–patient communication. Health, Risk and Society 2011 (Gregory, Peters, & Slovic, 2011) An excellent paper I only discovered on 14 July 2014. I wondered why and fou...

What is the relationship of our Quality Adjustment to GRADE?

GRADE Applying the GRADE procedures identifies four levels of ‘evidential quality’ (Balshem et al., 2011). These are given labels and associated numerical icons (stars): High (4); Moderate (3); Low (2); Very Low (1). The numbers appear t...

What is a Quality-Adjusted Opinion?

Annalisa opinions bring together the BEANs for the performance rates of each option on each criterion with the criteria importance weights of the person owning the decision. For some criteria the person is the best source of the BEANs, since they are...

What is a DecisionAL? ... TranslationAL?

A DecisionAL is an online decision support program that produces an opinion on a decision in the form of an Annalisa. The opinion comes in the form of scores for each of the included options, which combine the ratings entered into evidence panel...

What is dual-processing theory?

Dual processing theory is currently the most favoured explanation – or set of explanations - of the cognitive processes that characterise human judgement and decision-making. It assumes that our cognitive processes include both system or type I...

What is risk communication?

Risk communication is the focus of much misdirected effort for two main reasons, both of which suggest we are better off without the 'r' word'. One reason is that if risk is not used simply as a synonym for probability it is compounding two entirely...

What is a Decision Technology?

A technology is simply a way of doing something. For anything to be done or made or performed a technology is required. Through history, ways of making things or undertaking the same task have changed dramatically, so it is common to speak of the rep...

What is a Network Meta-Analysis

A Network Meta-Analysis, sometimes called a Mixed Treatment Comparison, synthesises the results of disparate intervention studies. Typically it is used to overcome the fact that no head-to-head evaluations have been made for all the available optio...

What is our perspective?

In DecisionALS we adopt a global perspective, seeing ourselves as directly addressing individuals in any location or setting. This has the very important implication that our option lists do not reflect any  policies, guidelines, legislation, su...

What is evidence?

The term evidence is often used in a way that restricts its relevance to decision making, to the point of decisional irrelevance in many cases. Decisions must be, and are made, in both the clinical and public health contexts, whatever the state of th...