Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Copyright © 2008 EDB, Halpern, Ku, Hau & Ho
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
4.1 Exercise 1
The following scenarios involve decision-making. Please read them carefully and
answer the questions in detail.
A.
Think about this: “I want more money” (a common wish among us). How could
I get more money? Try to list eight possible solutions.
B.
Your friend told you this fictional scenario: A couple who have been with each
other for ten years have been running into frequent arguments lately and are
very unhappy. They have sought professional counselling with little effect.
What do you think the couple should do? Should they separate or should they
stay the same way?
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
C.
Read the following scenarios carefully and answer the questions.
1)
You’ve bought a $400 ticket to watch a famous musical. When you arrive
at the theatre, you discover that you’ve lost your ticket. You’ve forgotten
your seat number and you cannot prove to the theatre staff that you have
bought a ticket. In this situation, will you spend another $400 to buy a new
ticket? Why?
2)
You plan to spend $400 to buy a ticket for a famous musical. When you
arrive at the theatre to buy the ticket, you discover that $400 is missing
from your wallet. Now assume that you have enough cash: Will you still
buy the ticket? Why?
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
4.2 The techniques of decision-making
This activity introduces you to the decision-making worksheet. The
decision-making worksheet is a convenient tool that can help you with difficult
decisions, and help you find out the most suitable option for you. It helps you
to make wise and effective decisions!
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
4.3 Exercise 2
You are about to graduate from secondary school after all these years of study.
Thinking seriously about your future, you realise that graduation is not the end, but
the beginning of another phase of life. Graduating from secondary school marks the
beginning of your adulthood and you will soon begin working. It is time to plan your
future career. The first difficult question you need to deal with is what to study in
university. Your area of study will have an impact on your future work as well as your
career development plan. If you are clear about your goal, i.e. you know the
profession you would like to join, it would be easy for you to find ways to realise it.
For instance, if you decided that you would like to be a nurse or an accountant, it
would be much easier for you to choose your area of study because a relevant degree
is a prerequisite. On the other hand, if you cannot or do not intend to go to university,
you may need to consider the type of job you want to choose.
In general, it is common that students about your age do not have a solid career
goal. Therefore, this is a question with no easy solution.
Step 1: Defining and Clarifying the Question
You must have a clear understanding of the question you need to decide upon. You
need to think and reconstruct the problem from different perspectives so as to
identify the core of the problem precisely. You should spend a little more time on
this step because a wrong question is likely to lead to a wrong decision.
How to think and define your question from another perspective?
If you want to go to university or pursue further studies, the decision you need to
make is, “what and where should I study?” The problem is that you do not have a
clear goal about what you want to do in the future and hence, you do not know
where to begin in choosing your area of study.
In this case, you may think from another perspective and redefine your question:
Since you do not have a specific area of study or career in mind, then why not set
your goal as to increase your opportunity of engaging in various different
professions?
We can redefine the original question more precisely from “what and where
should I study?” to “what programme of study should I choose to increase my
opportunity of engaging in various different professions?”
Of course, we understand that university education is not the same as professional
training. But in this simplified example, we try to demonstrate that the clarification
of questions helps solve problems.
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Step 2: Generating Alternatives
You may choose programmes whose median entrance requirements are not higher
than your expected public examination score. At the same time these programmes
offer a diversity of courses to improve your opportunity of engaging in different
professions. Below are a few examples:
Integrated Business Administration Programme
Programme objectives: The programme aims to develop students’ all-round
business talents and to prepare them to work in different
business sectors after graduation. The programme offers a
comprehensive and integrated business education.
Programme details:
Students will be introduced to all fields of business
administration and are subsequently free to choose their
own areas of specialisation. Currently, students can
choose from over ten such areas, including Business
Economics and Information System Administration.
Philosophy
Programme objectives: The programme aims to help students build a strong
foundation in humanities and to prepare them for further
study. It will also give students training in critical thinking
skills and communication skills, which are necessary for
all professions.
Programme details:
The programme is comprehensive and diverse. It
integrates Chinese and Western philosophical traditions
and also takes into account topics on national and regional
issues. Core courses include Logic, Introduction to
Philosophy, History of Philosophy, and three other
optional courses.
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Psychology
Programme objectives: The programme teaches the basic concepts of psychology.
After laying a good foundation, students can choose their
area of specialisation. Apart from learning the theories,
there is interesting scientific research that is most suitable
for students with good analytical ability.
Programme details:
Psychology uses scientific methods to study human
behaviour and thinking. The programme covers the three
major areas of psychology, namely the Fundamentals of
Psychology, Experimental Psychology and Applied
Psychology. Optional courses include Introduction to
Counselling Psychology, Introduction to Clinical
Psychology, Personality Psychology and others.
Internet & Multimedia Technologies
Programme objectives: The programme aims to provide professional training in
the internet usage and multimedia technology industries.
Programme details:
The programme equips students with the essential skills in
the application of the internet and multimedia
technologies through a practicum and an internship. It
helps students lay a good professional foundation and
trains them to be self-learners so that they can keep up
with the new knowledge in this ever-changing specialty.
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Step 3: Variables to Consider
After choosing a few options, list the variables which may affect your decision.
The following are some common variables to consider when choosing a
programme of study:
1. Personal interest and ability
How interested are you in this programme? Some programmes are very
intensive and some particular parts of the programmes could be boring. Unless
you are really interested, you may want to give up once you encounter
difficulties. How is your ability in this area? What was your past performance
in related subject examinations?
2. Employment prospect
Is it easy to find a job related to your area of study? Is there a demand in the
market for graduates from this area? Does the salary reach the market index? If
the salary is less than satisfactory, are you willing to accept it? What are the
prospects of this industry?
3. Others’ opinions
Your parents and teachers could give you some valuable advice. They are more
experienced and are able to assess your ability. However, sometimes they may
oppose your choice for their own reasons. Your peers can also offer you
advice. They may know your personality and ability well since they are often
around you. Their advice may not be as useful as your seniors’, but it could
still be a good reference point for you.
4. Resources / scholarships
If finance is your major consideration, you should take note of any subsidies or
scholarships that may help with your financial difficulty, so that you can focus
on your study. Are there subsidies or scholarships available for your chosen
programme?
5. Personality
Personality is an important variable. Some people believe that if you want to
enter the business world, you must be expressive, outgoing and good at
socializing because you often need to meet and negotiate with other people or
clients. Even if you have the qualification you need, your lack of such qualities
could become your obstacles at work.
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Step 4: Weighing the considerations
You may notice that the variables to consider in the worksheet are not of equal
importance. Therefore, you need to weigh how important each variable is before
you make your decision. In this activity, the following rating scale will be used:
5
Very important
4
Considerably important
3
Neither important nor unimportant
2
Not very important
1
Not important at all
Now fill out the following table to weigh the importance of the variables based on
your opinion:
Variables to consider
Importance
Personal interest and ability
Employment prospects
Others’ opinions
Resources or scholarships
Personality
For instance, the following table shows the sample ratings by a student:
Variables to consider
Personal interest and ability
Employment prospects
Others’ opinions
Resources or scholarships
Personality
Copyright © 2008 EDB, Halpern, Ku, Hau & Ho
Importance
5
5
2
2
4
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Step 5: Weighing the alternatives
When weighing the various alternatives, how well each alternative fulfils the
variables to consider can be expressed as scores.
A different rating scale will be used to assess each alternative:
+2 very suitable
+1 quite suitable
Note: Positive numbers (+2 or
0 neither suitable nor unsuitable
able to fulfil the variables, whereas
-1 not quite suitable
negative numbers (-2 or -1) denote
-2 not suitable at all
the opposite.
+1) indicate that the alternative is
Complete the following table for the first chosen alternative (Integrated Business
Administration Programme):
Alternative Programme
Variables to consider
Importance
Score
Personal interest and ability
Employment prospects
Others’ opinions
Resources or scholarships
Personality
For instance, the following table shows the sample ratings for the Integrated
Business Administration Programme by a student:
Alternative 1: Integrated Business Administration Programme
Variables to consider
Importance
Score
Personal interest and ability
5
0
Employment prospects
5
+1
Others’ opinions
2
+2
Resources or scholarships
2
+1
Personality
4
-1
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Step 6: Calculating a decision
Multiply the
To calculate a decision, we multiply the ratings of the variables to consider with
their corresponding scores.
importance by
the score for
each variable.
For instance, the following table shows the sample ratings for Alternative 1
(Integrated Business Administration Programme) by a student:
The result is
in bold in the
subtotal
Alternative 1: Integrated Business Administration Programme
Variables to consider
Importance
Score
Subtotal
Personal interest and ability
5
0
5x0=0
Employment prospects
5
+1
5x1=5
Others’ opinions
2
+2
2x2=4
Resources or scholarships
2
+1
2x1=2
Personality
4
-1
4 x (-)1 = -4
Total:
column.
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Add the subtotals (in bold) together and write
down the sum in the bottom row, as the total score
for this alternative.
Now based on your opinion, try to complete the following calculation tables for
this situation. (In this scenario, you have four alternatives so you will need four
calculation tables.)
Alternative 1:
Variables to consider
Importance
Score
Subtotal
Personal interest and ability
Employment prospects
Others’ opinions
Resources or scholarships
Personality
Total:
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Alternative 2:
Variables to consider
Importance
Score
Subtotal
Personal interest and ability
Employment prospects
Others’ opinions
Resources or scholarships
Personality
Total:
Alternative 3
Variables to consider
Importance
Score
Subtotal
Personal interest and ability
Employment prospects
Others’ opinions
Resources or scholarships
Personality
Total:
Alternative 4
Variables to consider
Importance
Score
Subtotal
Personal interest and ability
Employment prospects
Others’ opinions
Resources or scholarships
Personality
Total:
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Step 7: Overall assessment
The alternative with the highest total score is the best alternative. If two alternatives
have the same totals, then we need to add other variables to consider to the
worksheet until one scores higher than the other. Since the scores of these two
alternatives are so close, only a slight difference is needed to reach a decision. You
can also apply the “⅔ ideal rule” to help your decision-making:
• ⅔ Ideal Rule
This approach attempts to reach a decision by comparing the total score with an
“ideal score”. An ideal alternative is the one that gets the highest score (i.e. ideal
score) in all variables to consider, but in reality this is hardly ever the case.
Therefore, if an alternative obtains ⅔ of the ideal score, it is considered to be a
rather appropriate alternative. Of course, alternatives which score more than ⅔ of
the ideal score are even more desirable, whereas those which score below should be
ruled out.
For instance, in our rating scale, a perfect alternative will get a score of +2 in all
variables to consider. Thus, the first step of the “⅔ ideal rule” is to multiply each
variable to consider by +2 to obtain the highest score (i.e. the maximum total score
of an ideal alternative). By this calculation, the maximum total score of an ideal
study programme is 50. The benchmark based on ⅔ of this idea score would then
be: 50 x ⅔ = 33⅓.
If all the total scores in the worksheet are below 33, you may add other variables to
consider. By following these steps, you will continue to add variables to consider
and recalculate the total scores until one of the alternatives scores higher than ⅔ of
the ideal score.
Although the worksheet is useful, there are many factors that cannot be listed out
and calculated in terms of score. The above scores are used to help us decide rather
than determine our final choices.
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Step 8: Reflection
•
Did you have difficulties using the decision-making worksheet? What were
the difficulties and how did you resolve them?
•
Do you think the worksheet can help you make a wise decision? Why?
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Step 9: Summary
Decision-making is a difficult process as it involves a lot of hard thinking. Studies
have indicated that when making decisions, people who used decision-making
worksheet were more likely to be satisfied with their results than those not using
them. In general, they thought that a decision made with the help of a
decision-making worksheet was better than one made without it.
Of course, we do not need help from decision-making worksheets for trivial events
like buying an ice cream. However, in the course of our life, there are many
occasions where we need to make important decisions. When you have a major
life decision to make, a decision-making worksheet is a tool that can help.
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
4.4 The techniques of decision-making – A revision
You must have a clear understanding of the question you need to decide upon.
You need to think from different perspectives and define the problem from
different perspectives so as to identify the core of the problem precisely. This is
not easy, so you should spend a little more time on this step because a wrongly
defined question is likely to lead to a wrong decision.
You can practise Step 1 again in the following exercise.
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
4.5 Exercise 3
Holiday finally arrives after all the classes and exams. You decide to go
travelling and you are considering your destination. You are aware that there are too
many destinations featured in travel brochures and they all seem so attractive. You
have no idea how to begin.
How to think and define your question from another perspective?
In this situation, my decision is to:
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
And my problem is:
Now, let’s think again from another perspective. Despite the countless number
of attractive destinations, we know that people’s preferences vary with regard to how
they want to travel and the type of activities they like. In your case, what are your
preferences? (You may choose more than one answer.)




Trying out exciting and novel activities
Exploring unique cultures / histories
Shopping
Meeting people from all over the world
 Sunshine and beach
 Others: _________________________________
Having thought about the question from another perspective (by first identifying
the way I like to travel and the activities I want to do), now I can define the question
more precisely as follows:
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
Now, let’s sum it up.
The original question is:
The question is subsequently defined as:
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Worksheet 4: Decision-making
I think the original question/the newly defined question (choose one only) can
better help me make a decision in this situation because:
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