Document Type
Article
Keywords
probability elicitation; decision analysis; continuous distributions; fractile estimation
Disciplines
Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
We present the results of an experiment comparing two popular methods for encoding probability distributions of continuous variables in decision analysis: eliciting values of a variable, X, through comparisons with a fixed probability wheel and eliciting the percentiles of the cumulative distribution, F(X), through comparisons with fixed values of the variable. We show slight but consistent superiority for the fixed variable method along several dimensions such as monotonicity, accuracy, and precision of the estimated fractiles. The fixed variable elicitation method was also slightly faster and preferred by most participants. We discuss the reasons for its superiority and conclude with several recommendations for the practice of probability assessment.
Article Number
1085
Publication Date
12-2008
Peer Reviewed
1
Recommended Citation
Abbas, Ali E.; Budescu, David V.; Yu, Hsiu-Ting; and Haggerty, Ryan, "A Comparison of Two Probability Encoding Methods: Fixed Probablity vs. Fixed Variable Values" (2008). Psychology Faculty Publications. 85.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/psych_facultypubs/85
