Suchergebnisse

Four standards are proposed to assess instruments designed to evaluate group decision process effectiveness. These standards were applied to a multicriteria evaluative instrument based on the Competing Values Approach to decision process effectiveness. In a study using nine groups and three types of raters (facilitators, participants, and observers) in a field setting, the instrument was found to be appropriately insensitive to role differences between raters within groups and appropriately sensitive to differences across groups. Ratings of facilitators and participants within groups were the most consistent, although their ratings diverged on four of the effectiveness scales.

Effective communication between citizens & public officials is essential to a representative democracy, but conventional methods of communication are inadequate for complex policy formation. Four major reasons are reviewed for this inadequacy of conventional communication methods, based upon known difficulties of understanding & describing cognitive processes. A new method, derived from social judgment theory, which enhances the quality of communication between the public & its representatives is described & illustrated. A randomized cluster sample of residents (N = 362) in a central Colo county participated. Rs were asked to report the extent they would like to live in their county if it were to change on several indices of quality of life; 30 hypothetical "futures" were presented & evaluated. Regression analyses were used to describe the importance placed on the various indices of quality of life by each R. Rs were then clustered into groups with homogeneous values & graphic representations of their judgment policies were derived. The method demonstrates the manner in which various citizen factions may communicate complex value tradeoffs important to them as the basis for formulating public policy. 2 Tables, 2 Figures. AA.