Ralph L. Keeney

Duke University | DU · Fuqua School of Business

Many individuals and organizations face and address decision situations as problems, which are to be solved. However, decisions are the only way to influence actively what is important. This paper differentiates decision problems and decision opportunities and illustrates how proactive, value-focused decision making can create attractive decision o...

The best way to improve your quality of life is through the decisions you make. This book teaches several fundamental decision-making skills, provides numerous applications and examples, and ultimately nudges you toward smarter decisions. These nudges frame more desirable decisions for you to face by identifying the objectives for your decisions an...

The quality of alternatives is crucial for making good decisions. This research, based on five empirical studies of important personally relevant decisions, examines the ability of decision makers to create alternatives for their important decisions and the effectiveness of different stimuli for improving this ability. For decisions for which the f...

Entscheidungssituationen werden häufig als Probleme wahrgenommen, die es zu lösen gilt. Allerdings sind Entscheidungen die einzige Möglichkeit, Einfluss auf das zu nehmen, was wichtig ist. Dieser Beitrag grenzt Entscheidungsprobleme und Entscheidungschancen ab und zeigt auf, wie durch proaktives Entscheiden nicht nur die Wahrscheinlichkeit, mit Pro...

Entscheidungssituationen werden häufig als Probleme wahrgenommen, die es zu lösen gilt. Allerdings sind Entscheidungen die einzige Möglichkeit, Einfluss auf das zu nehmen, was wichtig ist. Dieser Beitrag grenzt Entscheidungsprobleme und Entscheidungschancen ab und zeigt auf, wie durch proaktives Entscheiden nicht nur die Wahrscheinlichkeit, mit Pro...

Introduction In 2007, Michael Chertoff, then secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), characterized the task of the Department as follows: We have to identify and prioritize the risks – understanding the threat, the vulnerability and the consequences. And then we have to apply our resources in a cost-effective manner. (Chertoff,...

This article addresses the difficulties of incorporating uncertainty about consequence estimates as part of stakeholder deliberations involving multiple alternatives. Although every prediction of future consequences necessarily involves uncertainty, a large gap exists between common practices for addressing uncertainty in stakeholder deliberations...

Decision analysis is usually thought of as a model for decisions with a single decision-maker. Many attempts to extend decision analysis to group decisions have led to results indicating how it cannot be done. Other analyses, such as the well-known impossibility theorem of Arrow (1963) [1], have tried to combine rankings of alternatives by individu...

Consumers are often poorly informed about the energy consumed by different technologies and products. Traditionally, consumers have been provided with limited and flawed energy metrics, such as miles per gallon, to quantify energy use. We propose four principles for designing better energy metrics. Better measurements would describe the amount of e...

The number and quality of alternatives are crucial for making good decisions. This research, based on empirical studies of important personally-relevant decisions, examines the ability of decision makers to create alternatives for their important decisions and the effectiveness of different stimuli for improving this ability. In our initial study,...

Analyzing decisions with multiple objectives requires thought about issues not relevant to single-objective decisions. The two key issues are identifying an appropriate set of objectives and prioritizing them. Both tasks may appear to be almost trivial: just write down your objectives and state your priorities. Experiments and experience indicate t...

This paper derives a general prescriptive model for group decision analysis based on a set of logical and operational assumptions analogous to those for individual decision analysis. The approach accounts for each group member's potentially different frames of their common decision, including different events and different consequences of concern....

Anstelle auf die Entwicklung besonders guter Alternativen zu fokussieren, treiben Unternehmen einen hohen methodischen und zeitlichen Aufwand für die Bewertung von Alternativen. Value-focused Thinking beinhaltet verschiedene Konzepte und Verfahren zur Identifikation und Strukturierung von Zielen sowie darauf aufbauend zur systematischen Entwicklung...

Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) provides a systematic approach to structure complex decisions for subsequent analysis. It is a powerful complement to decision analysis and its application has been growing in recent years. This paper discusses the application of VFT in Brazil to three problems in different contexts: water management, information system...

This article uses decision analysis concepts and techniques to address an extremely important problem to any family with children, namely, how to avoid the tragic death of a child during the high-risk ages of 15-24. Descriptively, our analysis indicates that of the 35,000 annual deaths among this age group in the United States, approximately 20,000...

Brainstorming can be a useful technique to create alternatives for complex decisions. To enhance the quality and innovativeness of the created alternatives, value-focused brainstorming incorporates two features of value-focused thinking into the traditional brainstorming procedures. First, it explicitly identifies the valued aspects of potential al...

This paper presents a natural extension of Bayesian decision theory from the domain of individual decisions to the domain of group decisions. We assume that each group member accepts the assumptions of subjective expected utility theory with respect to the alternatives from which they must choose, but we do not assume, a priori, that the group as a...

Howard Raiffa has been a pioneer in all aspects of the decision sciences. His path breaking research has advanced the forefront of statistical decision theory, game theory, decision analysis, behavioral decision theory, risk analysis, and negotiation analysis. While serving as Harvard University’s Frank P. Ramsey Professor of Managerial Economics,...

The interests of many groups, some with multiple objectives, are important to include in evaluating strategies affecting salmon in the Skeena River. A multiattribute utility model is proposed for addressing these issues. Two first-cut utility functions are assessed using the preferences of two individuals familiar with the problem. These utility fu...

One of the most challenging tasks of homeland security policymakers is to allocate their limited resources to reduce terrorism risks cost effectively. To accomplish this task, it is useful to develop a comprehensive set of homeland security objectives, metrics to measure each objective, a utility function, and value tradeoffs relevant for making ho...

Real decision makers exhibit significant shortcomings in the generation of objectives for decisions that they face. Prior research has illustrated the magnitude of this shortcoming but not its causes. In this paper, we identify two distinct impediments to the generation of decision objectives: not thinking broadly enough about the range of relevant...

Das vorliegende Buch beschreibt die Entwicklung von Kriterien zur Bewertung von Energiesystemen für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Er stellt einen Beitrag zu einem größeren Forschungsprojekt über die Sozialverträglichkeit von Energiesystemen dar, das von der Programmgruppe "Technik und Gesellschaft " der Kemforschungsanlage Jülich GmbH durchgeführ...

All of us make decisions that are not entirely self-centered; we voluntarily anticipate what we think to be the preferences of others and incorporate them into our decision making. We do this, not because of legal requirements or social norms, but because we are altruistic; we care intrinsically about the welfare of others. In this paper, we illust...

Collaborative engineering requires collaborative group decisions. This paper presents foundations for a collaborative group decision model, and offers suggestions on how to implement such a model. Specifically, decision analysis techniques are explained to provide a sound foundation and a helpful tool to guide collaborative group decisions. These t...

Many complex decision problems require value judgments, and it is often useful to build formal models of these value judgments. Several models and assessment procedures exist for this task ranging from simple rating and weighting techniques to sophisticated multiattribute utility models that incorporate tradeoffs and risk attitudes. In this chapter...

This paper analyzes the relationships between personal decisions and premature deaths in the United States. The analysis indicates that over one million of the 2.4 million deaths in 2000 can be attributed to personal decisions and could have been avoided if readily available alternative choices were made. Separate analyses indicate 46% of deaths du...

Seasonal products have an effective inventory deadline, a time by which the inventory must be ready to distribute. The deadline creates an incentive to start early with production. However, opportunities to gather information that might change production decisions provide an incentive to defer the start of production. We study the resultant dynamic...

Decisions are made with the purpose of achieving something, which is defined by the values for the given decision. Objectives specify those values in detail. Value-focused thinking is designed to keep your attention throughout the decision process on what you hope to achieve. Its purposes are to help define in a clear and explicit manner the decisi...

This paper extends the familiar multi-stage framework for choice by explicitly describing the role that goals play at each stage. We first present a typology of goals, ranging from content to process and from immediate to long-term illustrating it in the context of two examples—purchasing a new car and earthquake retrofitting. We then delineate eac...

Objectives have long been considered a basis for sound decision making. This research examines the ability of decision makers to generate self-relevant objectives for consequential decisions. In three empirical studies, participants consistently omitted nearly half of the objectives that they later identified as personally relevant. More surprising...

The decisions of if and when to have a first child are very important for any woman or couple. This paper develops a model to examine when a woman should begin trying to conceive, which depends on the personal circumstances and values of each woman. The model incorporates separate objectives for a woman's professional, social, and family aspects of...

The fundamental objectives of any decision problem should define why the decision maker is interested in that decision. However, listing a complete set of the fundamental objectives for a decision is not a simple task. It requires creativity, time, some hard thinking, and the recognition that it is important. This chapter offers many suggestions to...

Decisions are made to achieve objectives. A qualitative list of the objectives for a decision is the foundation for a value model that unambiguously represents objectives in a quantitative manner. The objectives guide thinking and the value model provides a basis for analyzing alternatives to best meet the desired objectives. This article illustrat...

To solve or resolve public policy problems requires decisions. The intent is to choose the best alternative in each situation. Hence, the way the notion of best is defined and measured in each case is critical. A structured process is outlined to acquire knowledge about public values that could be used to evaluate alternatives and identify the best...

This paper describes a decision analysis methodology to evaluate academic programs. It avoids the shortcomings of the well-known evaluations of universities and academic programs produced by the public media. In addition to evaluating traditional departments and schools, the methodology is designed to evaluate interdisciplinary programs or fields t...

The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) have focused attention on risk assessment of potential insect, weed, and animal pests and diseases of livestock. These risks have traditionally been addressed through quarantine protocols ranging from limits on the geographical areas from which a p...

In this paper we develop a conceptual framework and model for valuing risks to an individual's health and life and to support decision making about investments in health, quality of life, and safety. Our treatment of health risks in the model builds on the popular quality-adjusted-life-year (QALY) framework that balances health quality and length o...

With the many possible designs that a financial company can offer to a consumer (eg terms, price, quality, features), a company can identify win-win products for both the consumer and the company. A key to identifying win-win products is to explicitly integrate the consumer's preferences for price and quality with the company's preferences for prof...

The foundation for any decision is a clear statement of objectives. Attributes clarify the meaning of each objective and are required to measure the consequences of different alternatives. Unfortunately, insufficient thought typically is given to the choice of attributes. This paper addresses this problem by presenting theory and guidelines for ide...

Decision analysis has been used to help solve numerous complex decisions over the last few decades. However, its power as a basis for structuring one's thinking to resolve decisions has barely been tapped. To realize this potential, we in the decision analysis community must train people to think about their decisions using the concepts and princip...

This paper presents and illustrates an approach and procedures to stimulate the creation of design alternatives. The purpose is to generate many very good alternatives for a specific new product. Subsequently, a comparative evaluation of these alternatives and honing the designs of the most promising ones can proceed. To create potential alternativ...

Clear communication is important for making good decisions and for teaching people how to make better decisions. Decision analysts have special concepts with terms unfamiliar to most decision makers. Hence, in communicating about decisions, it is necessary to clarify and agree on usage of terms and often use terms familiar to decision makers to des...

In newspaper editorials, public commentaries and the like, licensing authorities are often advised to solve the "accident problem" by taking the "nut behind the wheel" off the road. This paper uses six-year driver records of some 8, 000 California drivers to estimate the reduction in accidents that would in fact occur if accident repeaters were rem...

This paper addresses a problem common to many government agencies--trying to specify a regulatory policy that is in some sense best for a given situation. Such questions demand the consideration of multiple conflicting objectives, non-repeatable uncertainties, costs and benefits accruing to various individuals, businesses, and organizations, and ef...

Clear communication is important for making good decisions and for teaching people how to make better decisions. Decision analysts have special concepts with terms unfamiliar to most decision makers. Hence, in communicating about decisions, it is necessary to clarify and agree on usage of terms and often use terms familiar to decision makers to des...

To solve or resolve public policy problems requires decisions. The intent is to choose the best alternatives. The way that the notion of best is defined and measured in each case is critical. A structured process is outlined to elicit and measure the consequences that should be used to evaluate alternatives and identify the best ones. The foundatio...

Designing new loan products and introducing product features is critical to establishing and maintaining a competitive advantage in retail credit lending. In thinking about these processes, there is a tendency to think that creating and selling a product to a consumer has the economic characteristics of a fixed positive sum gain. The better the dea...

Value trade-offs define how much must be gained in the achievement of one objective to compensate for a lesser achievement on a different objective. Value trade-offs that adequately express a decision maker’s values are essential both for good decision making in multiple-objective contexts and for insightful analyses of multiple-objective decisions...

This paper outlines a sound, practical approach for making more informed decisions about environmental policy choices. It emphasizes the importance of using a structured decision process to specify and organize values, use these values to create alternatives, and assess tradeoffs to help achieve a desired balance across key objectives. Although the...

The potential impacts from climate change, and climate change policies, are massive. Careful thinking about what we want climate change policies to achieve is a crucial first step for analysts to help governments make wise policy choices to address these concerns. This article presents an adaptive framework to help guide comparative analysis of cli...

The potential impacts from climate change, and climate change policies, are massive. Careful thinking about what we want climate change policies to achieve is a crucial first step for analysts to help governments make wise policy choices to address these concerns. This article presents an adaptive framework to help guide comparative analysis of cli...

All decisions are made to pursue the values important to an organization. It is more likely that these values will be achieved if they are made explicit in an understandable and useful way. This paper presents details and examples of how to build a value model for telecommunications management decisions. It includes procedures for building a solid...

The public and regulators are naturally concerned about any decision that has uncertain but potentially serious health and environmental consequences. When facing such decisions, some individuals say we should resolve significant uncertainties before taking expensive action that may be unnecessary. Others support the precautionary principle, which...

Practice Abstracts carries short reports of specific current or recent OR/MS projects. Often these reports are based on existing documents, such as internal reports or company newsletters. We hope that these abstracts will be accessible, interesting, and valuable to practitioners in other organizations. Contributions should be sent for evaluation t...

Many important decision problems require value tradeoffs among conflicting objectives. Typically, some alternatives are better on some objectives and some alternatives are better on other alternatives. In these situations, the even-swap method allows you to explicitly focus on the relevant value tradeoffs to make a smart choice. The method guides y...

First Page of the Article

British Columbia Gas, a major utility, was required by the British Columbia Utilities Commission (BCUC) to develop an integrated resource plan that addressed multiple objectives and involved the participation of stakeholders. To assist BC Gas, we elicited values separately from most of the senior executives at BC Gas, members of the BCUC, and repre...

Seagate Software provides tools and applications for managing and accessing information. In 1995, Seagate Technology began building the company using a strategy of acquiring software companies with synergistic products for information, network, and storage management. After over a dozen acquisitions, it needed to integrate them into a single compan...

Making good decisions is a key to the success of every industrial engineer. To make good decisions, an engineer should start by sharpening his objectives and delving into alternatives. This report details the elements of decision-making. These elements are easy to use and require no special training. Taking a close look at these elements will not o...

Bad decisions can often be traced back to the way the decisions were made--the alternatives were not clearly defined, the right information was not collected, the costs and benefits were not accurately weighed. But sometimes the fault lies not in the decision-making process but rather in the mind of the decision maker. The way the human brain works...

All decisions of a service firm are made to achieve the objectives of that organization. It is more likely that these objectives will be achieved if they are made explicit in an understandable and useful way. This paper outlines how to build a value model of the objectives of a service firm. It summarizes procedures for developing a solid qualitati...

Making wise trade-offs is one of the most important and difficult challenges in decision making. Needless to say, the more alternative you're considering and the more objectives you're pursuing, the more trade-offs you'll need to make. The sheer volume of trade-offs, however, is not what makes decision making so hard. It's the fact that each object...

A moratorium on new electricity transmission lines has been proposed in several states because of the potential health effects of electromagnetic fields. Such a policy would remain in effect until health effects are either found to be insignificant or understood and mitigated. To examine this policy, we develop a simple model to compare either doub...

Regulatory costs are paid by individuals, which leaves them with less disposable income. Since individuals on average use additional income to make their lives safer and healthier, the regulatory costs lead to higher mortality risks and fatalities. Based on data from the National Longitudinal Mortality Study relating income to the risk of dying, ap...

The current national policy to manage nuclear waste from power plants is to dispose of it in a repository to be constructed at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. With many different assumptions about uncertainties and objectives, this strategy is shown to be the equivalent of $10,000 million to $50,000 million inferior to other available strategies. The imp...

El presente trabajo presenta un nuevo procedimiento de valoración agraria multicriterio (MAVAM), especialmente diseñado para situaciones en las que se dispone de escasa información, cuantificada o no, acerca de los elementos considerados. El procedimiento propuesto, válido para trabajar en decisiones individuales y colectivas, pretende capturar e i...

Values, meaning what we care to achieve, are essential to risk management. Understanding the relevant values is critical to making good decisions about risks. Thus values should be made explicit. Conceptual ideas and a few practical suggestions for building value models are discussed. Brief descriptions of several cases in which such models have fa...

Values, meaning what we care to achieve, are essential to risk management. Understanding the relevant values is critical to making good decisions about risks. Thus values should be made explicit. Conceptual ideas and a few practical suggestions for building value models are discussed. Brief descriptions of several cases in which such models have fa...

This paper uses the fundamental values of decision makers to guide a long-term wastewater planning process at Seattle Metro, a major utility district. Multiattribute value assessment is used to elicit the objectives of several elected officials and other key decision makers. The results are structured into a fundamental objectives hierarchy and a m...

The Tank Waste Remediation Systems (TWRS) Program is responsible for the safe storage, retrieval, treatment, and preparation for disposal of high-level waste currently stored in underground storage tanks at the Hanford site in Richland. The TWRS program has adopted a logical approach to decision making that is based on systems engineering and decis...

Modern science and medicine, and increasing prosperity, have brought many benefits to our society, but not without costs. One cost is that some of the technological innovations and new activities bring with them different and perhaps greater risks that threaten our lives. Any problem involving life-threatening risks is complex, so it is difficult t...

This paper employs multiattribute value assessment and risk analysis to evaluate the benefits of four alternatives to improve electrical system reliability in British Columbia. A multiattribute value model is constructed as a cost-equivalent function, based on value judgments provided by a group of senior system planners and two senior vice preside...

Values pervade the field of operations research. Expressed as objectives, goals, criteria, performance measures, and/or objective functions, they are necessary in theoretical operations research models and in applications. Because of their critical role, it is useful to develop these expressions of values from basic principles. This paper outlines...

As a society and as individuals, we Americans are preoccupied with risks, particularly risks to life. From AIDS to cancer to heart disease, from Alar to asbestos to benzene, from eating to drinking to smoking -- we worry about all the risks of living. We allocate substantial time, effort, and money to reducing risks, yet most of us believe that our...

Choices that require multiple stakeholders to balance conflicting objectives are among today's most controversial decisions. Although many techniques exist for helping decision makers to select among projects, little attention has been given to processes for identifying improved alternatives based on clearly articulated stakeholder values. In this...

National strategies to manage nuclear waste from commercial nuclear power plants are analyzed and compared. The current strategy is to try to operate a repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to dispose of high-level nuclear waste underground. The main alternatives involve temporary above-ground storage at a centralized facility or next to nuclear po...

The implications of global climate change are enormous. However, there are major questions concerning whether climate change is occurring. If it is, subsequent questions should consider when and how the changes will affect society. There are numerous possible expensive research projects that could address each of the many facets of these questions....

Regulatory costs are ultimately paid for by the individuals in our society. The reduction in disposable income can lead to changes in purchasing, such as for safety and health care; stress, such as from job loss; and behavior, such as smoking or alcohol consumption. On average, these changes induce greater mortality risks and lead to premature deat...

Regulatory costs are ultimately paid for by the individuals in our society. The reduction in disposable income can lead to changes in purchasing, such as for safety and health care; stress, such as from job loss; and behavior, such as smoking or alcohol consumption. On average, these changes induce greater mortality risks and lead to premature deat...

The purpose of creative thinking is to develop novel and unusual ideas. These ideas could be objectives, problem definitions, or solution alternatives. To succeed, one must follow the two most important rules for creative thinking: defer judgment, and produce large quantities of ideas. By deferring judgment, one avoids self-criticism, which is the...

Clarity of the basic values of an organization will become increasingly important as organizations grapple with increasingly complex decisions in the 1990s. To structure and quantify basic values of the British Columbia Hydro and Power Authority, we elicited strategic objectives for the organization from three individuals, then refined and structur...