STRUCTURING INTERVIEWS WITH EXPERTS DURING KNOWLEDGE ELICITATION

We have developed interviewing techniques for knowledge elicitation based on (1) relevant research and techniques from the social sciences, (2) the nature of expertise, (3) a desire to assist a knowledge engineer to avoid reductive bias. one of the pitfalls associated with the acquisition of highly complex concepts, and (4) the desirability of de-coupling elicitation from implementation. The approach consists of four phases with guidelines for questions suited to each stage. First, the descriptive elicitation stage is intended to reveal the important entities and concepts in the domain as reflected in the terms and specialized language used by the expert. A second stage, structured expansion, is designed to probe the relationships between the domain concepts and the organization of the expert's knowledge using the terminology uncovered in the previous stage. The scripting phase relies on the declarative knowledge found through the two previous stages to discover procedural knowledge, and the final component, validation, is important throughout the process of knowledge elicitation to ensure that the knowledge being elicited is correct and adequate to enable a system in which it is implemented to solve the class of problems with which it is concerned.