In many situations, people find it difficult to make decisions without help. To make important decisions about medical, legal, or financial matters, they need the support of their family, professional carers or experts. The level of support that they need is likely to depend on their knowledge, their educational level, their abilities, and their experience and confidence in the domain in which the decision has to be made. Support can range from providing them with information or advice through shared decision making, in which choices jointly with a knowledgeable expert, to proxy decision making, in which the decision is made for them. What level of support should people be given? This is not a simple question. Different ways of making decisions with the help of others vary widely in the demands they make on financial resources and time. Also, their effectiveness may vary because they require different abilities in helpers. This exploratory network will identify current practice and the limitations associated with it in different domains. It will also attempt to relate these limitations to underlying psychological processes in helpers and those being helped. This will allow identification of some research questions to be addressed in pilot work.

Experiment 1 used a quantitative survey, with 7-point scales. Experiment 2 used an open-response qualitative survey. Experiment three was software-based, involving a serious of numeric judgments entered by participants into the computer.