Document Type

Article

Language

eng

Format of Original

10 p.

Publication Date

6-1994

Publisher

INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences)

Source Publication

Information Systems Research

Source ISSN

1047-7047

Abstract

Research over two decades has advanced the knowledge of how to assess predictive validity. We believe this has value to information systems (IS) researchers. To demonstrate, we used a widely cited study of IS spending. In that study, price-adjusted diffusion models were proposed to explain and to forecast aggregate U.S. information systems spending. That study concluded that such models would produce more accurate forecasts than would simple linear trend extrapolation. However, one can argue that the validation procedure provided an advantage to the diffusion models. We reexamined the results using an alternative validation procedure based on three principles extracted from forecasting research: (1) use ex ante (out-of-sample) performance rather than the fit to the historical data, (2) use well-accepted models as a basis for comparison, and (3) use an adequate sample of forecasts. Validation using this alternative procedure did confirm the importance of the price- adjustment, but simple trend extrapolations were found to be more accurate than the price-adjusted diffusion models.

Comments

Published version. Information Systems Research, Vol. 5, No. 2 (June 1994): 170-179. DOI. © 1994 INFORMS (Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences). Used with permission.

Monica Adya was affiliated with Case Western Reserve University at the time of publication.

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