An experimental study of GDSS support application effectiveness

This study exammes the effect of two computerized appli cations, voting/rating and brainstorming, on small decision making groups. A review of the literature on Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS) provides Justification and back ground for the study. A theoretical rationale for predictive hypotheses based on social psychological theories of small group interaction is developed, and an experimental design to test the hypotheses is presented. Four sets of small groups receive different treatments. The "control" groups receive no computerized support, the second receive computerized voting/rating, the third computerized brainstorming, and the fourth a combination of the two. Group level dependent variables are decision time and quality of decision; individual level dependent variables are quality of interaction, proclivity to participate and attitude toward deci sion. The individual dependent variables are analyzed using the MANOVA procedure and the group dependent variables using the Kruskal-Wallis procedure. There were no significant re sults on any of the analyses; alpha was set at 0.05. It concludes that this study helps build upon past studies by narrowing the scope of GDSS effectiveness and could be used as a guide for future GDSS research.

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