Predicting Group Output: Assessing the Relative Impacts of Task-Related Input and GSS Use

Although GSS researchers recognize the importance of communication within the group in determining the final group output, little attention has been given to the information that the individual group members possess prior to the group activity as a basis for this communication. -I'he purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to characterize the pre-group, task-related information that individuals possessed, and to (2) to examine the impact of a GSS, as a transformer, on the sampling of these inputs during the process of generating group outputs. Our results provide strong evidence for the importance ofpre-group information in determining the group output. For the idea generating task used in this study, the effect of using a GSS was overwhelmed by the impact of the task-related information that group members possessed prior to the group activity.