This proposal outlines an approach to developing a comprehensive modeling language and supporting computer environment that will permit managers and others with limited experience to build and use decision models. This is clearly an ambitious undertaking, but reviewers of the proposal expressed confidence in the principal investigator and in his ability to make significant progress on the topic. The proposed effort would extend earlier work of the investigator by developing a set of educational tools that will introduce users to structured modeling approaches. These tools then will be tested on small groups of users and the results of these experiments will form an empirical basis for evaluating a prototype modeling environment. This direct involvement of user groups is considered to be critical to determining the usefulness of structured modeling approaches and their feasibility as an assessible tool for developing decision models. The results of this project are expected to add significantly to the understanding of structured modeling environments and to what is known regarding how rapidly and how extensively structured modeling is likely to be adopted by managers as a decision.aiding tool.
