Use of “Fuzzy” Statements in Medical Decision Contexts

Abstract

In studying views and attitudes concerning various matters the methods employed often aim at radically limiting the range of possible answers, at keeping the language of questions or statements simple and clear and at avoiding items that are complex or may be interpreted in more than one way. In the present study, which considers two investigations regarding attitudes toward questions of importance in health care decisions, the aim was largely the opposite of that just described. Instead questionnaires of a “fuzzy” type were employed, the statements these involved being such that they could readily be judged as neither completely true nor completely false but as lying somewhere in between. It was felt that the complexity of views and attitudes in the situations of interest here could more readily be conceived in such terms. The questionnaires used presented subjects with statements of a fuzzy type which they were to judge the degree of truth of on a 100-division scale (half-unit markings being scored as well) on which the extreme value of 0 implied the statement to not be appropriate at all and the extreme value of 100 (on this so-called truth-value scale) implied it to be fully appropriate.