- Link:
- http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/62617
- Collection:
-
- Subject
- Engineering Systems Division.
- Creator:
- Broniatowski, David André, 1982-
- Contributors:
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering
Systems Division. Christopher L. Magee.
- Publisher
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Type
- Thesis
- Format
- 280 p.
- Language
- eng
- Rights
- M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See
provided URL for inquiries about permission.
- Rights
- http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
- Description
- Committees of experts are critical for
decision-making in engineering systems. This is because the
complexity of these systems requires that information is pooled
from across multiple specialties and domains of knowledge. The
social elements of technical decision-making are not well
understood, particularly among expert committees. This is largely
due to a lack of methodology for directly studying such
interactions in real-world situations. This thesis presents a
method for the analysis of transcripts of expert committee
meetings, with an eye towards understanding the process by which
information is communicated in order to reach a decision. In
particular, we focus on medical device advisory panels in the US
Food and Drug Administration. The method is based upon natural
language processing tools, and is designed to extract social
networks in the form of directed graphs from the meeting
transcripts which are representative of the flow of information and
communication on the panel. Application of this method to a set of
37 meetings from the FDA's Circulatory Systems Devices Panel shows
the presence of numerous effects. Prominent among these is the
propensity for panel members from similar medical specialties to
use similar language. Furthermore, panel members who use similar
language tend to vote similarly. We find that these propensities
are correlated - i.e., as panel members' language converges by
medical specialty, panel members' votes also converge. This
suggests that voting behavior is mediated by membership in a
medical specialty and supports the notion that voting outcome is,
to some extent, dependent on an interpretation of the data
associated with training, particularly when a small number of
interpretations of the data are possible. Furthermore, there is
some preliminary evidence to suggest that as clinical trial data
ambiguity and difficulty of decisionmaking increases, the strength
of the mediating effect of medical specialty decreases. Assuming a
common decision is reached, this might indicate that committee
members are able to overcome their specialty perspective as the
committee jointly deals with hard problems over longer periods of
time. In cases where the panel's vote is split, a lack of
linguistic coherence among members of the same medical specialty
correlates with a lack of linguistic coherence among members who
vote the same way. This could be due to the presence of multiple
interpretations of the data, leading to idiosyncratic or
value-based choice. We also find that voting outcome is associated
with the order in which panel members ask questions - a sequence
set by the committee chair. Members in the voting minority are more
likely to ask questions later than are members in the voting
majority. Voting minority members are also more likely to be graph
sinks (i.e., nodes in a social network that have no outflow) than
are voting majority members. This suggests an influence mechanism
on these panels that might be associated with framing - i.e., later
speakers seem to be less able to convince other panel members to
discuss their topics of interest contributing to these members'
minority status. These results may have some relation to FDA panel
procedures and structure. Finally, we present a computational model
that embodies a theory of panel voting procedures. Model results
are compared to empirical results and implications are drawn for
the design of expert committees and their associated procedures in
engineering systems.
- Description
- by David André Broniatowski.
- Description
- Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2010.
- Description
- This electronic version was submitted by the
student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute
Archives and Special Collections.
- Description
- Cataloged from student submitted PDF version of
thesis.
- Description
- Includes bibliographical references (p.
254-263).
- Rights
- M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be
viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or
distribution in any format is prohibited without written
permission. See provided URL for inquiries about
permission.
- Access:
- Instructions in case access is denied
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