Consensus Building
Consensus building is when consumers are engaged in a deliberative, democratic process to reach a shared agreement on key issues using a variety of participatory approaches. Consensus building approaches encourages open discussions with diverse perspectives from all stakeholders including those with lived experience, clinicians and researchers and uses structured methods to guide agreements that balance priorities of all involved. Common consensus building approaches include Citizens’ Jury, the James Lind Alliance method, the Delphi model and priority setting workshops.
The Delphi method was used to prioritise the research needs that aligned with the community at a women’s health research institute. Women, clinicians and researchers took part in a three round Delphi survey to reach consensus on the priority list. In round 1, participants proposed key research topics. In round 2, participants rated the topic’s importance and those with a low consensus were removed. In the final round, the list was refined and the top five priorities were finalised. This structured and inclusive approach made sure that women’s health research priorities were focused on real-world needs, leading to research that created greater impact on the community.
In order to identify research areas that are most important to patients, carers and clinicians, a dementia research institute held a priority setting workshop to inform their lab based and clinical research streams. The workshop was attended by people living with dementia, carers, support workers, clinicians and researchers to ensure diverse perspectives were included. Small group discussions and ranking exercises were held with participants sharing key challenges in dementia care, treatment and research. Through facilitated discussions, participants achieved consensus on the top five research priorities to focus on.
Resources
For more information about each of these approaches, please see below.