Decision time results were used to assess the strategies that 90 college undergraduates used in a complex decision-making task. Trend analyses revealed that the functions relating choice time to the number of choice alternatives in a set and the number of attributes comprising those alternatives contained linear (increasing) components. In addition, for a portion of the subjects, there was a quadratic effect of the number of attributes available to the decision maker on choice time, suggesting that these subjects adopted simplification strategies at high levels of task complexity. Reliable individual differences in these trend components were observed, consistent with individual differences in motivation and/or processing capacities. These individual differences were included in an information-processing model of decision behavior that captured the choice time data observed in this study. Subjects' ratings of apartments were used as a basis to assess the extent to which the use of simplification strategies resulted in preference reversals. Contrary to expectation, subjects whose choice times contained quadratic components demonstrated fewer preference reversals at high levels of information load.The effect of task complexity on strategy selection has been examined in several studies of contingent decision behavior (Payne, 1982). This research has demonstrated that linear, compensatory models of decision making, such as a multiattribute utility (MAU) model, do not accurately describe choice processes when decision makers must process large amounts of information. The failure of linear models as process descriptors is often attributed to the demands placed on the human information-processing system by the use of strategies derived from these models (Shugan, 1980a(Shugan, , 1980bSimon, 1955Simon, , 1979. In order to reduce the cognitive demands of choice tasks, individuals often utilize simpler (nonlinear) decision strategies (Einhorn, 1971;Payne, 1976;Wright, 1975).

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In 1984, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) began funding its Child and Adolescent Service System Program (CASSP). In this paper, we present findings from a descriptive study of the experiences of the initial cohort of states to receive CASSP grants, conceived and conducted when the projects were approaching the end of their fifth and final year of NIMH funding. Detailed case studies were conducted of each of the 10 initial cohort projects, and the findings analyzed across projects. Data were collected from three major sources: (1) existing documentation about the projects, (2) site visits to each of the projects, and (3) information from relevant secondary sources. Findings suggest that the initial cohort projects utilized a variety of strategies and encountered a variety of barriers and facilitating factors. The projects generally implemented the intended CASSP program and did so by using a variety of strategies. The projects were judged by stakeholders in their states to have influenced the service systems in their states in the intended directions: toward a more comprehensive system of care that emphasizes community-based treatment; toward better integrated, more collaborative efforts among the state agencies involved; toward a more detailed understanding on the part of system stakeholders of the mental health problems of children and adolescents who have severe emotional disturbances, and of the influence of those problems on the lives of the children and their families; and toward increased involvement by parents and other family members in the care of these children and adolescents.

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