Value tree paper
Decision analysis assists in the process of structural thinking about decisions and the development of supportive subjective judgments that form a basis for good decisions. There are four main phases involved in the process of decision analysis that is the problem structuring, preference elicitation, recommendation decision and sensitivity analysis.

Under the problem structuring phase several issues need to be identified and defined. The first task to be carried out involves context decision definition. For example, this is the stage of identifying a college. After defining the problem, the objectives or objective is defined. For example, to come up with the decision of attending my college, the main objective was to find a college which offers the course that will assist me in gaining access to my career. In addition, the college had to offer that course at an affordable price and be near my place of residence (Howard, & Matheson 2005).

The next step involves the generation and identification of decision alternatives. Under this step, I evaluated different colleges which I could attend that offered the same course as the one I needed. After this, a hierarchical model of the objectives is formed. This assists in easily understanding the relationship existing between the objectives more easily. Moreover, a basis for further analysis is also created. Finally, measures are provided so as to identify the extent to which the decision alternatives satisfy the stated objectives for example, college A was going to offer the same course that I wanted to study but at a much higher price compared to college B which was going to offer the same course but at a much cheaper price. College C on the other hand was not offering the course that I wanted to study (Zebda 2011).

Under the preference elicitation phase an estimate of the decision maker’s