| Learning Objective #1: Describe the goals and overall methodological steps used in argument and H/heuristic analysis as they apply to the study of health-related judgments and decision making | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Gain introductory competence in the design of interview questions that elicit data capturing the judgment process that is of interest |
Background and Purpose: This paper describes argument and H\heuristic analysis, a methodological approach for analyzing the reasoning process involved in health related decision-making. This method is useful for analyzing judgments made by clinicians, patients, and persons encountering everyday health risks. Based on work in applied logic and research emerging on human cognition, this methodology is valuable for analyzing in-depth interview data collected to study individual and group thinking and judgment processes.
Procedures: This paper will describe steps in the study design, data collection and data analysis procedures needed to collect data for this methological approach. Key points include: framing of interview questions to maximize the externalization of the judgment process, data managment technques, data display techniques.
Uses of this research methodology: While other methods to examine health decision making capture decision tree alternatives and the final judgment, little is learned about the thinking processes used to arrive at that judgment. Argument and heuristic analyses typically document the content and chronology of the judgment process and allow an examination of the impact of culturally embedded knowledge and beliefs on the final health judgment. The analyses also provide strong insights into why the thinker develops confidence in their judgment process, even when the judgment may increase health risk or fail to solve health related problems. This methodology has value for furthering research in all areas of health behavior, but particularly in those areas where health risk is involved. Examples of analyses and decision maps, drawn from studies of cancer risk behavior (e.g. smoking, delay in breast cancer) are used to demonstrate this analysis technique.
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