Combining the judgments of experts: How many and which ones?

R. M. Hogarth (1978, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 21, 40-46) presents an analytical model which, under certain conditions, may be useful for estimating both the number of experts to include in a staticized group and which experts. This paper reports a study of an important real-world judgment task used to evaluate (1) the extent to which the specified conditions hold and (2) the effect of violations of the conditions on the ability of the model to approximate the actual empirical validities that result from forming such groups. The results indicate that, although the specified conditions hold only moderately well, the model suggested by Hogarth provides a remarkably good approximation to the actual empirical validities of the staticized groups. © 1986.

Duke Scholars

Author Robert H. Ashton Fuqua School of Business