DECSYS – Discrete and Ellipse-based response Capture SYStem

Data-driven techniques that capture uncertainty through intervals or fuzzy sets can substantially improve systematic reasoning about uncertain information. Recent years have seen renewed interest in the capture of intervals from a variety of sources - including experts and general survey participants. This approach avoids the more cumbersome batteries of questions that are otherwise required to capture individual uncertainty, and which may not obtain the same degree of fidelity. It also enables respondents to effectively communicate any range (e.g. vagueness) inherent in their response, allowing generation of models that represent this additional information. However, manual methods of obtaining and processing interval-valued data - such as through paper-based questionnaires, are labour and time intensive. This has provided a practical barrier to adoption of interval-valued response-formats in the wider community, from research to industry (e.g. marketing). We argue that establishing an effective and accessible method for interval-valued data-capture will greatly encourage research in and application of uncertainty-aware models of data. Thus, we present DECSYS, a newly developed open-source software tool, which enables the creation and administration of digital surveys that elicit both conventional and interval-valued responses. DECSYS incorporates a range of features, and is designed to maximise versatility for experimenters and usability for participants. Surveys can be conducted either locally or online, and results easily exported. We welcome community feedback, including on how to best tailor the tool in the future to maximise value and support multidisciplinary adoption of uncertainty-aware data collection.