Judgment Analysis is a method for learning about, analyzing, and improving how people make judgments and decisions. We use Judgment Analysis to learn how people make judgments so their expertise can be shared with others and to help organizations create consistent administrative policies or scoring and evaluation systems. Often there are opportunities to improve judgment-making by convening a panel of experts to share and build on each others expertise.

The Lens Model graphically represents how a person combines various pieces of information to arrive at a judgment or decision. Statistical analysis (multiple regresssion) is often used to analyze data from peoples judgments to capture their judgment making in a mathematical model. Often this is referred to as Policy Capturing.

Policy Exc enables you to perform judgment analysis using Microsoft Excel.^®

Bibliography and Resources

The Brunswik Society is an informal association of researchers who are interested in understanding and improving human judgment and decision making.

Anderson, B.F., Deane, D.H., Hammond, K.R., McClelland, G.H., and Shanteau, J.C. Concepts in Judgment and Decision Research: Definitions, Sources, Interrelations, Comments. New York: Praeger, 1981.

Arkes, H.A., and Hammond, K.R. Judgment and Decision Making: An Introductory Reader. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Beal, D., Gillis, J., and Stewart, T. The lens model: Computational procedures and applications. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1978, 46, 3-28.

Brehmer, B., and Joyce, C.R.B. Human Judgment: The Social Judgment Theory View. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1988.

Cooksey, R. W. Judgment Analysis: Theory, Methods, and Applications. San Diego: Academic Press, 1996.

Hammond, K. R. Human Judgment and Social Policy: Irreducible Uncertainty, Inevitable Error, Unavoidable Injustice. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Hammond, K. R., McClelland, G.H., and Mumpower, J. Human Judgment and Decision Making: Theories, Methods, and Procedures. New York: Praeger, 1980.

Hammond, K.R. and Stewart, T.R. (Editors). The Essential Brunswik: Beginnings, Explications, Applications. Oxford University Press, 2001.

Hammond, K.R., and Wascoe, N.E. Realizations of Brunswik's Representative Design. New Directions for Methodology of Social and Behavioral Science. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1980.

Hammond, K.R., Stewart, T.R., Brehmer, B., and Steinmann, D.O. Social judgment theory. In Kaplan, M.F. and Schwartz, S. (eds.) Human Judgment and Decision Processes. New York: Academic Press, 1975.