Making decisions from an interview: Expert measurement and mechanical combination

One way of making decisions on the basis of qualitative impressions is to identify a number of relevant dimensions, translate the impressions into quantitative ratings on each of the dimensions, and integrate the ratings using a mechanical combination scheme. The paper compares the output of this method to global (clinical) judgment. The basis for the comparison is a large database that includes both information collected in a structured interview and a relevant criterion. The results clearly suggest that mechanical combination outperforms clinical judgment, but also that the combination of both schemes produces the highest accuracy.