An assessment of group support systems research: results

Reports on the results of 200 group support system (GSS) experiments that have been published between 1971 and June 1998. 1582 hypotheses resulting from pairings of independent and dependent variables were categorized and analyzed. The results show that the modal outcome for GSSs compared to face-to-face (FtF) methods is "no difference", while the overall percentage of positive effects for hypotheses that compare GSSs to FtF is a disappointing 16.6%. These results vary by task type, the number of experimental groups per cell and the type of dependent variable measured. The purpose of this paper is to aid the GSS researcher by presenting detailed results of what has been studied and found in previous experiments, along with a discussion of what needs to be studied.