Decision Domain Research Articles

Data governance for wicked problems: A case from the Thai health system

AbstractThis study examined how data governance practices in multi‐agency organizations manifest while trying to solve a wicked problem. This study adopted the data governance framework to analyze the Working Group that is responsible for opium addiction and treatment projects in Thailand. This framework comprises five decision domains of data: data principles, data quality, metadata, data access, and data lifecycle. The results showed that the Working Group did not have strong data principles among the relevant agencies and faced local obstacles. This led to uncertainty in the other four areas. It demonstrated, however, some effective outcomes by improvising its specific approach, which considers the relationships between various stakeholders in their dynamic adaptations within the overall data governance process. The Working Group practiced localized framework strategies, which consisted of eight approaches: data consensus in the knowledge network, strong structure, information integrity and cultural awareness, flexibility of organizational integration, dynamic adjustment process, effective information sharing, unlocking stagnations, and data governance cycles. All these strategic approaches compensated for the low performance of the current universal data governance framework.

Data Mining Techniques in Decision Making

Data mining aims to find relevant information for decision-making, forecasting, optimising, and other business or research reasons. In this study, data mining is used in the domain of decision-making. Various problems for this domain exist in the literature, including selection problems, considering unnecessary attributes, and removing irrelevant attributes in the dataset by applying different preprocessing techniques. For this purpose, a smartphone dataset is used, and different machine learning classifiers are applied. Decision Tree, Naive Bayes, SMO, bagging, and Random Forest were chosen for precision, recall, and F-measure. Results demonstrate that Random Forest obtains 57% accuracy and performs better on average than the other algorithms. The class "Saving Account" was classified with 52% accuracy as of the other attributes, but it has the fewest errors depending on the attributes. This study can be extended by applying the proposed methodology to a rich volume dataset and deep-learning techniques.

Climate anxiety, coping strategies and planning for the future in environmental degree students in the UK.

There is increasing recognition of the mental health burden of climate change and the effects on general well-being, even in those who have not (yet) experienced direct impacts. Climate anxiety, which is prominent among young people in particular, describes a state of heightened distress about the (future) effects of climate change. Despite evidence of a link between engagement in climate change issues and heightened climate anxiety, there is a dearth of knowledge on how this affects emerging professionals preparing for careers in the environmental sector. Furthermore, there is a paucity of literature regarding the extent to which young adults are coping with their thoughts and feelings about climate change, and the extent to which they consider climate change in making future plans. The aim of this study was to understand the occurrence and personal management of climate anxiety in UK university students through an online questionnaire. This study was the first to investigate the association between climate anxiety, coping strategies and future planning in university students. Environmental degree students (n = 249) reported greater levels of climate anxiety, more frequent employment of all three examined coping strategies and in particular considered climate change as a factor in their career plans, as compared to their non-environmental degree counterparts (n = 224). Problem-focused coping was the most commonly endorsed strategy, although the prior literature on coping suggests that this may not be sustainable for individually intractable problems. Highly climate-anxious students were more likely to consider climate change in all five decision-making domains, including family planning, long-term habitation, career, financial and travel decisions. This study has identified a need to communicate effective climate anxiety coping strategies to environmental practitioners, university students and educators. Additional research is required to validate the study findings and investigate what motivates students to incorporate climate change into future plans.

Approach-avoidance orientations can predict young children's decision-making.

When facing situations that involve risk and reward, some may focus on the opportunity for reward, whereas others may focus on potential risks. Here, we used an original set of pictorial scenarios to try and predict 3- to 8-year-olds' reward-seeking and risk-avoiding behavior in three decision-making scenarios (N = 99; Mage = 5.6; 47% girls). We found that children's reward-risk tendencies did not predict sharing behavior in a dictator-game 'sharing' task. However, they predicted children's monopolizing behavior in a dictator-game 'taking' task and their preferences between taking home a 'risky' or a 'safe' reward in a novel prize-preference task. Overall, using a set of original pictorial scenarios to assess individual differences early on in development now provides initial evidence that bridges individual differences and decision-making domains and exposes behavioral patterns that were thus far hidden.

"Heart strings and purse strings" revisited: A preregistered replication and extension.

The Appraisal-Tendency Framework outlines that discrete emotions of similar valence behave differently, based on each emotion's specific appraisal profile. In the domain of pricing decisions, a seminal paper by Lerner and colleagues report incidental, negative emotions of disgust and sadness to show a divergent effect on spending decisions based on the perceived ownership of a commodity. Specifically, disgust-reduced spending while sadness increased spending on a new product. However, these researchers theorized, but did not statistically test the effects of emotion-induced motivational goals for sadness ("change circumstances") and disgust ("expel and avoid") as the drivers behind their divergent effects on spending. This study (N = 403) sought to replicate these primary findings in close adherence to the original protocol with better measurement properties in a different geographical location. It further extended the examination by empirically testing the distinct mediating processes for sadness and disgust by utilizing measures identified from a pilot study (N = 169) based on the original protocol. We found support for the effect of sadness (vs. disgust and neutral) in inducing higher choice prices through the motivational goal of changing circumstances, but the expected pattern of results for disgust was not replicated. Additionally, we examined the role of arousal in this context as a factor driving the effect of these emotions on spending. Our research offers new insights regarding the well-known "misery-is not miserly" effect for practitioners while also providing impetus for future research on the endowment effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

BYOB of wine, but which one? Unveiling new boundary conditions and moderating effects for restaurant patrons' consideration set formation

PurposeDeparting from conflicting findings on the role of involvement in the formation of the consideration set, the authors of this study seek to shed light to the wine consumer behaviour and expand previous findings in the bring-your-own-bottle (BYOB) of wine restaurant industry. The authors seek to determine the contradictory effect of involvement on the consideration set size and variety.Design/methodology/approachThree empirical studies were conducted. In Study 1, the relationships were tested in a personal consumption situation and in Study 2 in a gift-giving context. Finally, in Study 3, inconsistencies in the intensity of the hypothesised relationships were explored by testing the triple interaction amongst the three variables (i.e. involvement, decision-making context and decision domain).FindingsAccording to the authors' findings BYOB of wine consumers form larger considerations sets in memory-based decision contexts. Involvement's effect on wine consideration set size is stronger in memory-based decisions. BYOB restaurant patrons form smaller sets of alternatives for personal consumption. BYOB restaurant patrons form more heterogeneous sets of alternatives in wine gift-giving. BYOB of wine restaurants should facilitate consumers' wine-selection process.Originality/valueThe authors make an effort to explain and determine the up-to-date contradictory effect of restaurant patrons' involvement on the BYOB of wine consideration set size and the amount of variety contained therein. The study offers new insights, by unfolding the moderating effect of decision-making contexts (i.e. memory-based versus stimuli-based) and decision domains (i.e. personal consumption versus gift-giving) on this effect of involvement on the properties of consideration sets.

The Future of Decisions From Experience: Connecting Real-World Decision Problems to Cognitive Processes

In many important real-world decision domains, such as finance, the environment, and health, behavior is strongly influenced by experience. Renewed interest in studying this influence led to important advancements in the understanding of these decisions from experience (DfE) in the last 20 years. Building on this literature, we suggest ways the standard experimental design should be extended to better approach important real-world DfE. These extensions include, for example, introducing more complex choice situations, delaying feedback, and including social interactions. When acting upon experiences in these richer and more complicated environments, extensive cognitive processes go into making a decision. Therefore, we argue for integrating cognitive processes more explicitly into experimental research in DfE. These cognitive processes include attention to and perception of numeric and nonnumeric experiences, the influence of episodic and semantic memory, and the mental models involved in learning processes. Understanding these basic cognitive processes can advance the modeling, understanding and prediction of DfE in the laboratory and in the real world. We highlight the potential of experimental research in DfE for theory integration across the behavioral, decision, and cognitive sciences. Furthermore, this research could lead to new methodology that better informs decision-making and policy interventions.

It starts from home? Explaining environmentally responsible resource and waste management

Resource and waste management are indispensable to environmentally conscious action and a large part of EU Green politics. Little is known about factors affecting individual propensity for resource and waste management. The article examines the effects of environmental concerns, perceptions of climate change, preferences for EU integration, and media exposure (traditional and new) on the propensity to save resources and waste management employing a representative sample of 904 respondents in the Czech Republic. Methodologically we rely on principal component analysis, correlations, and a set of ordinal regression analyses. The results suggest that environmental and climate concerns increase the propensity to save resources and separate waste. The preferences for EU integration and media exposure were unrelated to saving resources and waste management, except exposure to online news, which negatively affected the environmentally motivated reduction of unnecessary car trips. The results imply immense consequences on the conceptual and policy-making levels. On the conceptual level the results suggest, that the mass media stopped to fulfill its developmental and persuasive functions, as generally people do not relate their pro-environmental behavior to the mass media exposure. From the policy-making perspective the mass media proves to be a poor resource for the pro-environmental actions as in case of social networks the role of mass media on waste management proved negative. We also suggest that saving resources and waste management stopped to be a topic of political and media influence but transferred to the domain of personal values and economic decisions.

To democratize or not to democratize AI? That is the question

AbstractThis paper advances the debate surrounding whether to democratize AI and explores some of the challenges and benefits of democratization through community-based work and direct democracy. We contend that community-based strategies can incorporate local knowledge and control, thereby providing more effective AI solutions that are human-centric and less harmful. However, democratization needs to be approached with caution and care, since this process requires a deeper understanding of who participates, the decision domain, and the different realities at stake. Moreover, we highlight the importance of participation in AI development to ensure its legitimacy, considering the capacity of this technology to shape reality. We emphasize that participation should be more than just involving stakeholders or seeking input from users. Rather, participation should involve local narratives that generate knowledge and shape information landscapes, thereby producing a different, anti-Cartesian scene. We conclude by underscoring that the success of democratizing AI hinges on the careful delineation of the boundaries of participation, which should include the specific needs of the immediate context, the decision domain, and the various participants involved.

A taxonomy of data governance decision domains in data marketplaces

Commercializing data and data-related services has gained in importance in recent years. Driven by digitalization and the Internet-of-Things (IoT), companies and individuals continuously generate vast amounts of data. Data marketplaces have emerged to support these data providers in selling their data to different data consumers. However, data marketplaces face challenges in different data governance decision domains that inhibit their adoption. To get a better understanding of how data marketplaces counteract these challenges, this paper develops a taxonomy of data governance decision domains in data marketplaces. We used a taxonomy development method to inspect 13 data marketplaces from eight countries. The resulting taxonomy shows an overview of mechanisms concerning data quality, data security, data architecture, metadata, data lifecycle, data storage, and data pricing. We discuss common instantiation patterns, highlight gaps, and propose possible solutions. The taxonomy sets a foundation for further research and theory-building on data marketplaces. Practitioners can use the taxonomy to develop customized data governance strategies for data marketplaces.

Decomposition analysis of women's empowerment-based inequalities in the use of maternal health care services in Ethiopia: Evidence from Demographic and Health Surveys.

The use of maternal health care services tends to rise with women's empowerment. However, disparities in the use of maternal health care services in Ethiopia that are founded on women's empowerment are not sufficiently addressed. In light of women's empowerment equity stratifier, this study seeks to assess inequalities in the uptake of maternal health care services (early antenatal care, four or more antenatal care and postnatal care services). Drawing on data from the four rounds of Ethiopia Demographic and Health Surveys (EDHSs) conducted between 2000 and 2016, we conducted analysis of inequalities in utilization of maternal health care services using women's empowerment as equity stratifier. We utilized concentration index and concentration curve for assessing the inequalities. We used clorenz and conindex Stata modules to compute the index and curve. Decomposition of the Erreygers normalized concentration index was done to explain the inequalities in terms of other variables' percent contributions. Complex aspect of the EDHSs data was considered during analysis to produce findings consistent with the data generating process. All analyses were done using Stata v16. Utilization of maternal health care services was inequitably distributed between empowered and poorly empowered women, with women in the highly empowered category taking more of the services. For instance, the Erreygers index for quality ANC are 0.240 (95% CI 0.207, 0.273); 0.20 (95% CI 0.169, 0.231) and 0.122 (95% CI 0.087, 0.157), respectively, for the attitude towards violence, social independence and decision-making domains of women's empowerment. Inequalities in the distribution of other variables like wealth, education, place of residence and women's empowerment itself underpin the inequalities in the utilization of the services across the women's empowerment groups. Equity in maternal health care services can be improved through redistributive policies that attempt to fairly distribute the socioeconomic determinants of health such as wealth and education between highly and poorly empowered women.

Modeling of multi-factory dependences in complex control systems by SUGENO fuzzy knowledge base

The creation of intelligent control systems based on soft computing for complex real-time systems is considered. Usually, the control of many objects and technological processes is performed by a human operator based on instructions and personal experience. Due to the uncertainty and incompleteness of information about the parameters of the object, the impossibility of their direct measurement and the natural diversity of the environment, the use of classical mathematical methods for the automation of control is impossible. Adaptive methods are used to solve the management problem under conditions of uncertainty. The most effective is the implementation of fuzzy control based on production rules, which does not require knowledge of the object model. The concept of fuzzy control is widely used because of its ability to operate according to conditions. The object is evaluated using fuzzy rules from the knowledge base that create a fuzzy decision domain. The stage of structural identification of the system when modeling an unknown dependency by Sugeno's fuzzy knowledge base is presented, which allows implementing a control algorithm based on a neural network. To take into account the maximum number of influencing factors, the hierarchical structure of the fuzzy control system is applied. Granulation by certain properties of the object and the environment at the level of input variables allows to reduce the dimensionality of the data vector and the number of rules of the knowledge base, making it possible to build fuzzy control systems with an unlimited number of inputs. According to this model, the decision-making process is divided into two levels. The first level reduces the amount of information to define the situations to be processed in the second level by the Sugeno knowledge base. A preliminary fuzzy model of control of complex dynamic objects with incomplete determination is built.

Exploring Malaysian parents' and teachers' cultural conceptualization of adolescent social and emotional competencies: A qualitative formative study.

Global implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) has been suggested to incorporate a systematic cultural adaptation process which relies on ground-up empirical data of a target cultural group in tailoring a culturally sensitive SEL intervention. Preliminary formative studies among local parents and educators were done to explore the conceptualization of social and emotional competencies (SECs) in various cultural settings, such as the continent of Africa and among the indigenous and refugee groups. Unfortunately, little scholarship has been devoted to studying the SEL adaptation process in Southeast Asian regions. This formative study aimed to explore Malaysian parents' and teachers' cultural conceptualization of adolescent SECs. This qualitative study interviewed 12 Malaysian parents and 10 Malaysian teachers comprising of Malay (82%), Chinese (9%) and Indian (9%) races in an online focus group discussion. Sampling is purposive to parents of adolescents and teachers at secondary school only. Data were analyzed thematically to determine the culturally sensitive SEL constructs for Malaysian adolescents. All themes and sub-themes of SEC regarded as crucial for Malaysian adolescents are aligned with CASEL's five domains of competencies. Our findings extended the conceptualization of subskills under CASEL's relationship skills and responsible decision-making domains, which reflect Asian cultural values. The main themes of social competency: (a) preserving interpersonal relationships, (b) utilizing intrapersonal skills, and (c) communicating effectively, are shared with the established CASEL constructs. However, the underlying subthemes denote the unique cultural manifestation of social competency in Malaysia. Two of the emotional competency themes represent the established CASEL constructs: (a) practicing self-regulation, (b) demonstrating help-seeking behavior, and the other two themes signify Asian values: (c) upholding altruism, and (d) maintaining cultural display rules. This formative study revealed the habitual use of experiential and expressive suppressions as adaptive emotion regulation strategies in Malaysian collectivist culture and offered a potential alternative emotion regulation pathway suitable for Malaysian adolescents. It also informed the feasibility of implementing SEL modules developed based on the CASEL framework in Malaysia and suggested two key lessons to enhance the cultural sensitivity of SEL in Malaysia: effective, respectful communication and expressive writing.

Assessing the Built Environment’s Reflectivity, Flexibility, Resourcefulness, and Rapidity Resilience Qualities against Climate Change Impacts from the Perspective of Different Stakeholders

The frequency and severity of climate change are projected to increase, leading to more disasters, increased built environment system (BES) vulnerability, and decreased coping capacity. Achieving resilience objectives in the built environment is challenging and requires the collaboration of all relevant sectors and professionals. In this study, various stakeholders were engaged, including governmental authorities, regulatory bodies, engineering firms, professionals, contractors, and non-governmental and non-profit organizations (NGOs and NPOs, respectively). The engagement was carried out through the answering of a questionnaire survey that reflects their perceptions about climate change adaptation, the built environment resilience qualities (RQs), and the degree of resilience of the existing built environment and their perceived capacities. The results were analyzed using several statistical tests. The results revealed that advancing public understanding and management tools, reducing economic losses, and developing necessary plans still require improvement. Additionally, the BESs were ranked concerning accepting the change and uncertainty inherited from the past or generated over time. This study emphasized the perception that the decision-making domain is crucial for delivering a reflective built environment. Additionally, features such as advancing public understanding and management tools, reducing economic losses, and developing necessary plans still require improvement. Furthermore, there is a belief in the importance of the task forces within the community as part of an emergency response plan, and a less reflective system would have less recovery speed. Therefore, the rapidity characteristic of a built environmental system to accept the change and uncertainty inherited from the past or generated over time is correlated to the system’s reflectivity quality. This study emphasizes the significant correlation between the different RQ traits. It also encourages researchers to formulate more objective methods to reach a set form for measuring RQs as an engineering standard.

Untangling the ‘health paradox’ among adolescent girls: the role of immigration status, depression, and decision-making

ABSTRACT The ‘health paradox’ is a phenomenon in which immigrants report better health than their native-born counterparts despite experiencing numerous adversities. This study examines the ‘health paradox’ among adolescent girls in the U.S. and evaluates the understudied pathways and conditions in the immigration status-health link, including the role of emotional (i.e. depressive symptoms) and cognitive (i.e. decision-making) domains. Drawing on Wave I (1994–1995) and Wave II (1996) of a nationally representative longitudinal study of adolescents (Add Health), a series of regression models was conducted to explore the relationship between girls’ immigration status and health (N = 6,543). Further, mean centered multiplicative terms and the KHB decomposition procedure were used to assess the moderating and mediating effects of depressive symptoms and decision-making. Results reveal that, in general, foreign-born girls enjoy better health as compared to their native-born counterparts, which is partially explained by their fewer depressive symptoms. Importantly, however, the experience of higher levels of depressive symptoms appears to decrease immigrant girls’ resilience. The ability to be thoughtful and reflective when making choices serves as a health protective factor among girls overall, suggesting the need to foster adolescent girls’ decision-making skills to improve their health. Policy recommendation based on our findings are discussed.

Impact of multidisciplinary team meetings on the management of patients with breast cancer in a large private healthcare facility.

Multidisciplinary meetings (MDMs) play a crucial role in decision-making in breast cancer patient care. This study aimed to firstly assess the impact of breast cancer MDMs in decision-making for breast cancer patients and secondly to determine the concordance between MDM recommendations and implementation of clinical practice. Patient cases to be presented at the weekly breast cancer MDMs were identified and prospectively enrolled. Management plans were predicted by the treating surgeon with the pre-MDM management plans then compared to MDM recommendations. Changes in decision-making were assessed in the following domains: further surgery, systemic therapy (endocrine, chemotherapy or targeted), radiotherapy, enrolment in a clinical trial, further investigations, and referral to other specialists or services. Patient records were subsequently reviewed at 3 months post-MDM to assess the rate of implementation of MDM recommendations and any reasons for discordance. Out of 50 cases, 66% (CI 53-79%; p<.005) experienced a change in management plan as a result of MDM discussion, with a total of 66 episodes of recorded change per decision-making domain affecting the following: further surgery (7.6%), endocrine therapy (4.5%), chemotherapy (19.7%), targeted therapy (4.5%), radiotherapy (18.2%), enrolment for a clinical trial (12.1%), additional investigations (22.7%), and further referrals (10.6%). MDM recommendations were implemented in 83.7% of cases. The breast cancer MDMs were found to substantially impact on the management plans for breast cancer patients, with 83.7% of MDM recommendations being implemented into clinical practice. This study reinforces the importance of MDMs in the management of these patients, as well as highlighting the need for further investigating and addressing the potential barriers to the implementation of MDM recommendations.

Cognitive Process Difference among Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa and Binge Eating Disorder

Eating disorder has created severe health problems for people different in gender, age and culture. The cognitive process varies depending on different types of the eating disorder. The current study of the cognitive process, including impulsivity (including motor response and decision domain), behavioral flexibility (including set shifting and goal-directed behavior), and attention bias are reviewed for eating disorders including Anorexia Nervosa (AN), Bulimia Nervosa (BN), and Binge Eating Disorder (BED). Then, the difference in decision-making is specifically discussed between AN, BN, and BED, indicating that decision impairment may reflect the trait of different types of the eating disorder. Besides, the decision-making process may reflect the different behavior of eating disorders. The article aims to categorize further subtypes of eating disorders and the conceptualization of AN-R (Restrictive type of Anorexia Nervosa), AN-B (Binging type of Anorexia Nervosa), BN, and BED. The result can bring more insights into neuroimaging to identify the underlying impairment, especially for the biological or cognitive endophenotypes that may attribute to impulsive and compulsive behavior for differentiating subtypes of obesity.

Big Data Analytics: A Literature Review Paper

In the age of information, decision-makers now have access to an enormous amount of data. The term "big data" refers to datasets that are not only large but also extremely diverse and fast, making it challenging to deal with them using conventional methods and tools. In order to handle and extract value and knowledge from these datasets, it is necessary to investigate and provide solutions due to the rapid growth of such data. In addition, decision-makers need to be able to draw useful conclusions from such a wide range of data that is constantly changing, such as data from daily transactions, customer interactions, and social network data. Using big data analytics, which is the application of advanced analytics methods to big data, such value can be provided. The purpose of this paper is to look at some of the various analytics tools and methods that can be used with big data, as well as the opportunities provided by using big data analytics in different decision domains.

Gendered differences in family reunion motivations, female-breadwinning status and spousal gender relations in young African migrant households in Hong Kong

Purpose Little is known about gender relations in young African migrant families residing in Hong Kong (HK). This study aims to present a first-hand account of daily lived experiences of African international doctoral student couples residing in HK, with special emphases on their Africa–HK migratory motivations, perceptions of female-breadwinning status, the effects of HK Immigration policy on marital power structures and the influence of spousal relative statuses (“breadwinner” versus “dependent”) on couples gender role performances and decision-making participations. Design/methodology/approach This study used ethnographic method involving several indoor family visits, non-participant observations and 21 in-depth interviews in six African student families. Fieldnotes were taken and interviews were tape-recorded, transcribed and interpreted using thematic content analysis. Findings Couples, especially dependent men, had a hard time deciding to migrate to HK for family reunion, unlike dependent women who willingly resigned to join their husbands in HK. Among the male dependents, the main reasons for migrating included anticipated economic returns, while women migrated in response to neolocal cultural expectations. Overall, patriarchy persisted – while men had the final say over key household decision-making domains, women remained primary performers of household chores, but manifested little bargaining power, restraining husband’s ability to spend family income when they are the family’s sole-earners. Women’s relative breadwinning status had very minimal significant impact. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to examine the effects of HK’s immigration policy on married African students’ migration motivations and the effects of female-breadwinning status on spousal gender relations in HK’s African student migrant households.

Visual processing and collective motion-related decision-making in desert locusts.

Collectively moving groups of animals rely on the decision-making of locally interacting individuals in order to maintain swarm cohesion. However, the complex and noisy visual environment poses a major challenge to the extraction and processing of relevant information. We addressed this challenge by studying swarming-related decision-making in desert locust last-instar nymphs. Controlled visual stimuli, in the form of random dot kinematograms, were presented to tethered locust nymphs in a trackball set-up, while monitoring movement trajectory and walking parameters. In a complementary set of experiments, the neurophysiological basis of the observed behavioural responses was explored. Our results suggest that locusts use filtering and discrimination upon encountering multiple stimuli simultaneously. Specifically, we show that locusts are sensitive to differences in speed at the individual conspecific level, and to movement coherence at the group level, and may use these to filter out non-relevant stimuli. The locusts also discriminate and assign different weights to different stimuli, with an observed interactive effect of stimulus size, relative abundance and motion direction. Our findings provide insights into the cognitive abilities of locusts in the domain of decision-making and visual-based collective motion, and support locusts as a model for investigating sensory-motor integration and motion-related decision-making in the intricate swarm environment.