ABSTRACT
The Critical Decision Method (CDM) is a cognitive task analysis (CTA) method for investigating how experts make decisions during nonroutine or critical incidents (Klein et al. 1989). It is a knowledge-elicitation type interview where the probes are based on Klein’s recognition-primed decision (RPD) model (Klein 1989) of naturalistic decision-making or NDM (Orasanu and Connolly 1993) of how people make decisions in natural settings. Additionally, experts are also asked to compare their performance with that of a novice or someone less experienced. This is in order to help the experts being interviewed explain and articulate behaviors that they usually take for granted. The resulting interview transcripts are then systematically analyzed using verbal protocol analysis procedures (Wong 2004). Analyzing the expert decision making in nonroutine situations can reveal important insights about the demands that these situations place on the worker. Such analyses can provide useful insights about the nature of expert decision-making and behavior in complex situations, and therefore, reveal aspects of the work that need to be supported, and very importantly, how those needs should be supported. While the CDM has been used extensively to study individual decision-making in actual work domains, it is being adapted as one of a suite of tools for investigating team decision-making (Klein 2000).
