Title
Decision-Making Under Uncertainty in Research Synthesis: Designing for the Garden of Forking Paths.
Abstract
To make evidence-based recommendations to decision-makers, researchers conducting systematic reviews and meta-analyses must navigate a garden of forking paths: a series of analytical decision-points, each of which has the potential to influence findings. To identify challenges and opportunities related to designing systems to help researchers manage uncertainty around which of multiple analyses is best, we interviewed 11 professional researchers who conduct research synthesis to inform decision-making within three organizations. We conducted a qualitative analysis identifying 480 analytical decisions made by researchers throughout the scientific process. We present descriptions of current practices in applied research synthesis and corresponding design challenges: making it more feasible for researchers to try and compare analyses, shifting researchers' attention from rationales for decisions to impacts on results, and supporting communication techniques that acknowledge decision-makers' aversions to uncertainty. We identify opportunities to design systems which help researchers explore, reason about, and communicate uncertainty in decision-making about possible analyses in research synthesis.
Year
DOI
Venue
2019
10.1145/3290605.3300432
Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Keywords
DocType
Volume
representing uncertainty, research synthesis
Conference
abs/1901.02957
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
978-1-4503-5970-2
3
0.38
References 
Authors
9
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Alex M. Kale1273.18
Matthew Kay245130.42
Jessica Hullman347726.51