A substantial body of empirical evidence indicates that decision support systems (DSS) are effective tools for increasing the utilization of management science models and accounting information. Our basic argument is that applying the conceptual foundations of DSS to evaluation and other forms of applied social research (ASR) is a potentially effective means of increasing the utilization of the results of these analyses in policy making. The two bases for this basic argument are: (a) analytical uncertainty is inevitably present in evaluation and other forms of ASR, and (b) the conceptual foundations of DSS provide a better means of coping with analytical uncertainty than are otherwise available.