Centre for Decision Research

What is Decision Research?

Decision Research focuses on the way individuals, groups and organisations make decisions. It involves perspectives that are:

• Descriptive - why and how decisions are made the way they are,
• Normative - how decisions should be made in some ideal sense, and
• Prescriptive - how can decision making be made more effective.

It is concerned with how people make judgments and take decisions, particularly in situations involving risk and uncertainty. The research has provided important insights into how and why people do what they do, why they make mistakes that can lead to poor outcomes for themselves and their organisations, and how we can use this knowledge to help them do it better.

Theories and findings from decision research have been applied extensively in such areas as political science, finance, marketing, health, medicine, management and the law. These applications have provided important insights into how decisions are taken in these areas, some of the errors and mistakes made by people, including experts, and how to improve these decisions.

The Centre

Founded in March 1996, the Centre brings together researchers from across the University of Leeds, and other local Universities, who have an interest in human decision making. Its strong multi-disciplinary focus has led to research collaborations across a wide range of disciplines e.g. Computer Studies, Business and Management, Psychology, Philosophy, Transport Studies, Health Studies, Medicine, Civil Engineering, Geography, Law, Education. Despite the different fields of application, much of this work is based on a broadly shared theoretical and methodological core.

Members of the Centre carry out a broad range of research, much of it funded externally, publish extensively in academic journals, edited books and practitioner journals, as well as presenting at major national and international conferences. In addition, they teach on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes, supervise doctoral students and run a broad range of short courses for professionals on various aspects of human judgment and decision making. These courses include general introductions that provide participants with insights about how they currently make decisions, some of the errors and biases inherent in what they do and how they can improve by using better ways of thinking and structured decision aids. In addition, members run specialist courses that are targeted on specific topics and professions e.g. behavioural finance for financial services professionals, consumer decision making for marketing professionals, risk communication for health, food and security service professionals.

Activities

This network of researchers is active in undertaking collaborative research and consulting work, both nationally and internationally, drawing on and combining the range of skills and facilities available within the University. The Centre has hosted a number of larger-scale conferences. Members of the Centre also engage in a range of teaching and training activities. These include: training in decision making skills for police officers, senior doctors and business professionals from many sectors; training in risk communication for a range of Government agencies. In addition, each of the Business School's MBA courses contains a module on Management Decision Making, covering both process and modelling aspects of decision support within organisations.

News

Along with former member of the CDR Merce Roca, John Maule has an article published in the latest edition of Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes entitled "Demand for probabilistic information and the effects of endowment". In addition, his book "Decision behaviour, analysis and support", written jointly with Simon French and Nadia Papamichail (Manchester Business School) was published by Cambridge University Press on August 1st 2009. In late June he also gave an invited keynote address to the 9th International Conference on Naturalistic Decision Making entitled "Can computers overcome limitations in human decision making?".

After a successful joint bid the Centre for Decision Research and the International Institute for Banking and Financial Services have been included in the Department for Work and Pensions Social and Economic Research Framework, which will run from 1 July 2009 for an initial period of 2 years (with a possible 2 year extension). This is an important achievement, as under the EU Procurement Directive only organisations participating in the Framework will be invited to submit tenders for future research commissioned by the DWP and HMRC.

Darren Duxbury, Rob Ranyard and Barbara Summers are co-authors (with colleagues from Italy) of a paper on perceptions of price changes and inflation, which has been awarded a highly prestigious Citation of Excellence award as one of the top papers of 2008 by Emerald Management Reviews. There are 50 awards per year (out of 15,000 papers reviewed) and awards include publications in such journals as American Economic Review, Strategic Management Journal and Journal of Finance. The paper is informing discussion in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Elisa Barilli, our Visiting Research Assistant from the University of Trento (Italy) has been awarded the EU- funded grant "Erasmus Mobility for Placements Action" dedicated to graduate and PhD students for internships in European companies or organisations. Elisa will undertake her four-month traineeship at the CDR from April to July 2009 under the supervision of Dr Barbara Summers and Professor John Maule. During the internship she will develop research skills, along with the associated analytical and administrative academic abilities, which will provide a sound basis for the development of her future career as a researcher and research leader.

Professor John Maule appeared on the Horizon documentary "How to survive a disaster", broadcast on 10th March 2009 on BBC2, contributing insights on risk perception.

2008

Purva Abhyankar, supervised by Dr Hilary Bekker and Dr Barbara Summers of CDR, passed the viva examination for her PhD in November 2008. Purva's thesis, which was entitled "Decision making about cancer treatment and clinical trial participation", explored the process of decision making on cancer trial participation with patients, and investigated the impacts of decision framing and values clarification on decision outcomes using experimental approaches. She found that informed decision making about trial participation can be enhanced by presenting the decision as an explicit choice between alternatives, providing full information prior to eliciting preferences, and using an explicit values clarification technique.

Professor Alan Pearman is leading the Leeds input to the 2 million euro TEN-connect project. This work, being undertaken for the Energy and Transport Directorate of the European Commission, is aimed at developing traffic flow forecasts for all the Trans-European transport networks and at recommending an assessment methodology to allow competing proposals for investment to be compared. Leeds is taking prime responsibility for this latter element, which incorporates both conventional cost-benefit analysis and a multi-criteria evaluation module, building on previous research carried out through CDR in conjunction with the Institute for Transport Studies.

Dr Barbara Summers, Dr Darren Duxbury, Professor John Maule and Professor Alan Pearman are currently doing work with the Department of Work and Pensions as part of the department's Auto-enrolment Project, which aims to encourage pension saving in the UK. Under auto-enrolment schemes people who enter into qualifying employment are automatically enrolled into a pension scheme (although they can choose to opt out). This approach has been found to increase pension saving in other contexts (such as US companies). The DWP commissioned survey work to investigate consumer attitudes to pensions and the auto-enrolment concept, and to look at consumer behaviour in relation to retirement saving, with CDR members acting in an expert advisory role. CDR offered advice to shape the questionnaire used and the subsequent analysis. More recently CDR has drawn on relevant research in decision science and related disciplines to highlight issues that would benefit from more in-depth investigation, helping to better understand individuals' motivations, attitudes and behaviours with respect to pension saving.

CDR welcomes Elisa Barilli, who is joining us as a Visiting Research Assistant. Elisa is studying for her PhD in Cognitive Sciences and Education at the University of Trento, Italy, and is doing research into the perception of mathematically equivalent probability formats - particularly fractions - from a cognitive perspective. Experts dealing with risk communication in the healthcare domain could benefit from the results of her work, gaining insight into the differences in patients' perceptions of risk arising from the format chosen to convey outcome uncertainty. Moreover, the results could also be applied in advertising, where the type of numerical expressions used to convey information can alter consumer perceptions of gains and losses.

Professor John Maule gave the opening address at the Information Security Forum's 19th Annual World Congress in the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya, Barcelona Spain (16 - 18 November 2008). His presentation outlined reasons why experienced security professionals often misperceive the risks to computer systems and how this can lead organisations to under-protect against some threats and over-protect against others, In addition, he considered why users of computer systems also misperceive the risks of their actions, how this can expose these systems to internal and external threats and how to facilitate better security awareness in this group of individuals.