An Assessment of Group Support Systems Experimental Research: Methodology and Results

Abstract:

By mid-1998, approximately 200 different controlled experiments had been published in 230 articles in refereed journals or major conference proceedings, which examined processes and outcomes in computer-supported group decision making. This paper is a concise overview of what has been studied and how: the systems, independent, intervening, adaptation, and dependent variables, manipulated or measured, and experimental procedures employed. Part I categorizes the contextual and intervening factors. Part II analyzes 1,582 hypotheses resulting from pairings of independent and dependent variables. The results show that the modal outcome for GSS systems compared with face-to-face (FtF) methods is “no difference,” while the overall percentage of positive effects for hypotheses that compare GSS with FtF is a disappointing 16.6 percent. Experiments with seven to ten groups per treatment condition working on idea-generation tasks and using GSS technology show an improvement up to 29.0 percent. These results are moderated by technology, process structure, communication mode, group factors, task type, the number of experimental groups per treatment condition, and the type of dependent variable measured. The purpose of this paper is to aid the GSS researcher by presenting detailed results of what has been studied and found in previous experiments, along with a discussion of what needs to be studied.

Key Words and Phrases:

• experimental research
• group support systems (GSS)
• research methodology

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jerry Fjermestad

Jerry Fjermestad is an Assistant Professor in the School of Management, New Jersey Institute of Technology. He received his B.A. from Pacific Lutheran University, an M.S. from Polytechnic University, and an M.B.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University. His current research interests are in collaborative technology, decision support systems, data warehousing, and enterprise information systems. He has published in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Group Decision and Negotiation, Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Information and Management, and Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.

Starr Roxanne Hiltz

Starr Roxanne Hiltz is Distinguished Professor of Computer and Information Science at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, where she also directs the collaborative Systems Laboratory and the Virtual University project. Her research interests encompass the acceptance and impacts of computer systems, centering on computer mediated communication, particularly group support systems and educational applications. Her publications include six books and articles in a variety of journals and conference proceedings, including Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Human Communications Research, American Journal of Sociology, and Proceedings of the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.