This article proposes a bidirectional feedback mechanism for consensus in group decision making (GDM) driven by the behavior of makers (DMs), which is discriminated with flexible harmony degree as one three possible states: (1) ‘tolerance behavior’; (2) ‘rationalist and (3) ‘conflict behavior’. The first two states are to be resolved reaching process round recommendations discordant DMs. Howeve...

BACKGROUND The Health and Social Care Act mandated research use as a core consideration of health service commissioning arrangements in England. We undertook a controlled before and after study to evaluate whether access to a demand-led evidence briefing service improved the use of research evidence by commissioners compared with less intensive and less targeted alternatives. METHODS Nine Cli...

Many studies discuss approaches for the evaluation of DSS. Few, however, provide a method to allow the context of the evaluation to be explicitly considered. This paper proposes a DSS evaluation method based on multiple criteria and incorporating a multiple constituency perspective. The approach proposed can be used for any group constituencies, involved in DSS project at any stage. With multip...

Adoption research for many years has considered individual farmer as the basis of analysis, whereas the effect of information networks on farmer’s decision-making has received limited attention. Hence, understanding the relation between farmers’ position within their agricultural information networks and their adoption decision is of practical importance. The present study was conducted at Puru...

Benner's work on expertise in nursing drew heavily on the writing of Dreyfus and Dreyfus in the field of computing. Dreyfus and Dreyfus argued that the continued failure of computer programmers to create an 'expert system', a program which could replicate the way that a human expert thinks, implied that experts do not think in a rational, analytic way. Dreyfus and Dreyfus therefore concluded th...

Because adolescents are generally viewed as "risk-takers," an assessment of planning and decision-making skills during the teenage years may reveal why this developmental group tends to engage in dangerous behaviors. One area in which these abilities have significant consequences for future outcome is pregnancy, a condition that requires a decision to either give birth or abort. Previewing, a p...