A Note on the Field of Decision Analysis

The term “decision analysis ” can be used more narrowly or more broadly, and this can be a source of confusion when our societies interact. For example, there are substantial differences between the editorial statements about Decision Analysis in the INFORMS Journals and the editorial statement for the Journal of Multicriteria Decision Analysis. For clarity, we discuss the terminology around decision analysis as DAS members would typically understand it. According to the editorial statement for the Decision Analysis area of the journal Operations Research: “Decision analysis methods have traditionally addressed modeling uncertainty (Bayesian inference, subjective probability elicitation, combining expert opinions, scoring rules for eliciting and evaluating probability assessments, sensitivity analysis, information value); structuring preferences (utility and risk attitude, utility assessment, stochastic dominance, structuring objectives and attributes, multiattribute utility and value); and representing and solving decision problems (decision trees, influence diagrams, Bayesian networks, alternative generation, value trees, fault trees, dynamic programming). Decision analysis methods also draw on related fields such as the psychology of judgment and choice (heuristics and biases, prospect theory) or methods for dealing with multiple stakeholders (cooperative and noncooperative game theory, negotiation). ” The objective of much of this work is to assist individua