About Professor Stewart

Thomas R. Stewart is Director of the Center for Policy Research and Research Professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy. He received his PhD in quantitative psychology from the University of Illinois and was formerly with the Graduate School of Public Affairs and the Center for Research on Judgment and Policy at the University of Colorado and with the Environmental and Societal Impacts Group at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

His research includes theoretical, methodological and applied studies of judgment and decision making, and he is particularly interested in expert judgment. His specific interests include methods of judgment analysis and the decomposition of judgmental skill as well as studies of expert judgment in medicine, weather forecasting and other fields. His work applies to any situation where professionals routinely make forecasts or other judgments, such as economic forecasting, weather forecasting, physicians diagnosing patients, supervisors evaluating employees, police officers making arrest decisions or customs officers evaluating airline passengers. Recently he has been investigating how people learn decision thresholds under conditions of uncertainty and limited feedback.

Selected Publications

• Stewart, T. R. (2009). The lens model. In M. Kattan (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Medical Decision Making. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
• Stewart, T. R. (2009). Social judgment theory. In M. Kattan (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Medical Decision Making. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
• Stewart, T. R., & Mumpower, J. L. (2004). Detection and selection decisions in the practice of screening mammography. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 23(4), 908-920.
• Stewart, T. R., Pielke, R. Jr., Nath, R. (2004). Understanding user decision making and value of improved precipitation forecasts: Lessons from a case study.  Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. 85(2), 223-235.
• Mumpower, J. L., Nath, R., and Stewart, T. R.  (2002)  Affirmative action, duality of error, and the consequences of mispredicting the academic performance of African-American college applicants.  Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 21(1), 63-77.
• Stewart, T. R. (2001). Improving reliability of judgmental forecasts. In J. S. Armstrong (Ed.), Principles of Forecasting: A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners. Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 81-106.
• Stewart, T. R. (2000).  Uncertainty, judgment, and error in prediction.  In Sarewitz, D., Pielke, R. Jr., and Byerly, R. Jr. (Eds.), Prediction:  Decision Making and the Future of Nature.  Washington D. C.: Island Press, 41-57.
• Stewart, T. R., Roebber, P. J. and Bosart, L. F. (1997). The importance of the task in analyzing expert judgment.  Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 69, 205-219.
• Stewart, T. R. and Lusk, C. M. (1994).  Seven components of judgmental forecasting skill:  Implications for research and the improvement of forecasts.  Journal of Forecasting, 13, 575-599.  (Reprinted in Connolly, T., Arkes, H. R., and Hammond K. R., Eds., (2000)  Judgment and Decision Making:  An Interdisciplinary Reader, Second Edition.  New York:  Cambridge University Press.)