Policy Capturing: An Approach to Understanding Personnel Decision-Making Processes

Abstract

D ecision makers in any industry constantly function as information processors.They have limited amounts of information which must be combined in some way to make intelligent decisions. The process which fills the interval between information gathering and the actual decision has long been a challenge to research ers: What exactly does the decision maker do with the available information? One approach to studying and describing the decision-making process is the method known as "policy capturing."Policy capturing is a statistical strategy which analyzes actual decisions, ulti mately providing a mathematical description of the judgment policy that was used. Its major objective is to develop models of the specific processes decision makers use to weight and combine different pieces of information. CHOOSING THE MODELWithin the regression approach to policy capturing (the other approach is the Bayesian, and will not be considered here), there are two paradigms: the correlational and the analysis of variance paradigms. Each technique builds a model which weights the available pieces of information (known as cues or predictors) according to their influence on the decisions (criteria).The correlational approach employs the statistical procedure of multiple regression analysis. Although it may involve any of several mathematical models, one model in particular has received a great deal of empirical investigation and support. This is the linear model, introduced by Hoffman (1960). Use of the linear model involves the notion that a judgment is accurately described as some linear combination of the available cues. Thus, in a linear model, each piece of information is weighted (or Laura Donnelly is a third-year graduate student in psychology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She recently received her master's degree there and is currently working towards her doctorate, with a focus in industrial/organizational psychology. Her priamry areas of interest are per sonnel selection and management issues. David Bownas is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State Uni versity. His major interests are in job analysis, personnel selection, and applications of quantitative methods to industrial psychology. Public Personnel Management Journal 81 by guest on July 25, 2015 ppm.sagepub.com Downloaded from

Making Decisions About Condoms: Whose Attitude Is It Anyway?

“…Participants undoubtedly recognized which cues were being manipulated and may have been tempted to rate them according to normative strictures. Yet the policy capturing approach has been shown to minimize the influence of normative demands (e.g., Dawes, 1979;Donnelly & Bownas, 1984).…”

“…Policy capturing (e.g., Brannick, 1993;Brehmer & Brehmer, 1988;Donnelly & Bownas, 1984;Hobson et al, 1981;Slovic & Lichtenstein, 1971) provides a methodology for representing how individuals weigh and combine bits of information to reach a decision. Participants are presented with a series of hypothetical scenarios, and make repeated judgments based on the information contained in each.…”

“…Individuals may act as if they are using ANOVA even when the underlying process is quite different (e.g., Hoffman, 1960). Studies of a variety of behaviors demonstrate that the decision processes delineated by policy capturing match behavior more closely than do self-report data (e.g., Arnold & Feldman, 1981;Brehmer & Brehmer, 1988;Donnelly & Bownas, 1984;Hobson et al, 1981;Slovic & Lichtenstein, 1971;Summers, Taliaferro, & Fletcher, 1970;Zedeck & Kafry, 1977).…”

To Help or Not to Help: Capturing Individuals' Decision Policies

“…Policy capturing provides a methodology for modeling how individuals or groups of individuals weigh and combine bits of information to make a judgment (see e.g., Donnelly & Bownas, 1984). The first step in a policy capturing study is to identify the set of variables (or cues) that are thought to affect the decision of interest.…”

Making Decisions About Sexual Intercourse: Capturing College Students' Policies

“…For each, participants indicated how frequently they would engage in sexual intercourse. This procedure, in which people read a set of scenarios or ª profilesº and then make a judgment, is known as policy capturing (e.g., Brannick, 1993;Brehmer & Brehmer, 1988;Donnelly & Bownas, 1984;Hobson, Mendel, & Gibson, 1981;Slovic & Lichtenstein, 1971). The technique has been applied in various domains to study decision making but represents a new approach in social psychology (e.g., Fritzsche & Penner, 1992;Gerrard & Luus, 1995).…”