Decision Theory and Utility Management

Abstract

SINCE Girshick presented his elementary survey of statistical decision theory in the December 1954 issue of the REVIEW, a tremendous amount of research has been published by behavioral scientists in journals that fall outside the focus of most workers in educational research. The new mathematical psychologists who have made important methodological contributions to the understanding of problems in decision theory and utility measurement have not been very much concerned with problems of immediate or practical interest to the educational psychologist, the curriculum specialist, the counselor, or the school administrator. Once many of the methodological problems have been resolved and a substantial amount of experimental work has been done to ascertain the suitability of the somewhat esoteric models in decision theory to the understanding and to the potential solution of certain educational problems, there will probably be little use of decision theory by research specialists in education. In the writer's estimation, at least 10 or 15 years will elapse before any marked application of decision theory will be made to the types of educational problems faced by most educational researchers. In view of the substantial overlap of the field of decision theory with (a) the problems of statistical inference, considered by Clark in Chapter I and by Michael in Chapter II; (b) the problems in psychophysics, signal detection, and information theory as well as general developments in scaling and measurement theory, presented by Schiffman and Messick in Chapter VII; (c) statistical learning models, detailed by Weitzman in Chapter VIII; and (d) computer technology, as described by Baker in Chapter X, the writer decided with somewhat mixed feelings that his presentation should be drastically curtailed in length and in scope relative to what he had initially planned to undertake. Nevertheless, a detailed survey was made of pertinent literature since about 1950. For the most part, references since 1954 have been included. Probably the most important contribution of this chapter will be to furnish the reader with a bibliography of slightly more than 100 carefully selected references which furnish what may be considered an appropriate base for the acquisition of an understanding of decision theory and utility management in the behavioral sciences. These references were selected on the basis of extensive consultation with several mathematical psychologists who have specialized in the study of decision theory.

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