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Dissertation Information for Ritu Agarwal

NAME:
- Ritu Agarwal

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Management Information Systems

SCHOOL:
- Syracuse University (USA) (1988)

ADVISORS:
- None

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- None

MPACT Status: Incomplete - Not_Inspected

Title: Knowledge acquisition for business expert systems--a decision-centric model and its empirical validation

Abstract: Knowledge acquisition has been identified as the key bottleneck in the development of expert systems. An inherently difficult task, this process is further limited by a number of factors including the cognitive limitations on the expert's ability to articulate his/her decision making processes, the lack of systematic procedures for performing the task, and the time commitment required of the expert. Most of the approaches presented in the literature for knowledge acquisition suffer from theoretical and methodological limitations and are constrained in their applicability to narrow and specialized problem domains.

This research has developed a model for knowledge acquisition that is derived from an inter-disciplinary synthesis of organizational decision making and cognitive psychology. The model incorporates a consideration of the particular phase of the decision making process and the type of uncertainty that is relevant to knowledge acquisition for the development of business expert systems. The use of organizational contextual factors as cues is proposed in the model. These cues can assist the expert in overcoming cognitive limitations on the recall of past decision making situations.

A formal experiment was conducted with industry executives as subjects to empirically validate the model. The performance of three groups of knowledge engineers: (1) novice knowledge engineers, (2) novice knowledge engineers trained in operationalizing the model, and (3) experienced knowledge engineers in extracting knowledge by interviewing experts was evaluated. A number of research hypotheses were tested about the knowledge elicited by the three groups. Two secondary observation methods: a questionnaire and a content analysis of the interview transcripts were used to generate response variables. The results of the tests indicate that the methodology was instrumental in extracting more knowledge in an efficient manner from experts and that it assisted novice knowledge engineers in performing at a higher level of expertise.

The contribution of this research is at two levels. At the first level, a model for knowledge acquisition was developed and validated in a constrained setting. At the second level, this research has developed and used certain metrics for the measurement of knowledge that can prove useful in further investigations.

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