DATA PROCESSING SYSTEM FOR MAPPING A COLLABORATIVE REASONING PROCESS

摘要

A technique for using a data processing system to measure organizational change and aid in decision-making, especially with respect to collaborative group decisions. The system is generalizable to any situation to improve information use, decision making, and measurement by creating a unit of analysis that is constant across diverse information sets. A process implemented according to the invention is based upon an initial interview approach that is used gather data on the topics under question. For example, if the application is to expedite decision-making processes relating to organizational change, the interview process asks a stratified sample of people in an organization open-ended questions. The interview responses are then represented in a unique data structure format to facilitate subsequent data collection, analysis and visualization in the context of an integrated, on-line active decision making and feedback system. The invention also specifies a graphical model and interface for collecting individual perceptions and factual data to support those perceptions, and then visualizing relationships and measuring the variance across groups or over time between these perceptions and the factual data using the same graphical model.