Goals and Tools

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

• Understand when it is appropriate to perform (or use the results of) a decision analysis
• Be able to create a simple decision tree
• Be able to read and understand journal articles that use decision analysis
• Determine if a decision analysis is valid
• Appreciate the usefulness of decision analysis

This module is somewhat different than the others, because it "walks you through" a simple decision analysis. This is a case where you will learn by doing! 

Two very useful books that you may want to obtain if you are interested in doing your own decision analyses are:

Petitti D.  Meta-analysis, decision analysis, and cost-effectiveness analysis.  2^nd ed. Oxford University Press, New York, 2000.  ISBN 0-19-513364-1

Weinstein M, Fineberg H.  Clinical decision analysis.  W.B. Saunders Co, Philadelphia, PA, 1980.  ISBN 0-7216-9166-8

The sample decision trees were created using DATA by TreeAge Software (www.treeage.com). They have a free demo; it is limited to 25 nodes and does not allow you to save your decision trees.