Utility of Policy Capturing as an Approach to Graduate Admissions Decision Making

Abstract

The present study examined and evaluated the application of linear policy-capturing models to the real-world decision task of graduate admissions. Major findings were that (1) effectiveness of policy capturing was moderated by psychology sub-areas, with the experimental and clinical subgroups show ing the highest and lowest predictability, respective ly ; (2) utility of the policy-capturing models was great enough to be of practical significance; and (3) least squares weights showed no predictive advan tage over equal weights.