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The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
PARTICIPATORY METHODS
by
Jerome C. Glenn
I. History of Participatory Methods
II. What are Participatory Methods?
Focus Groups and Opinion Polling
Charrette
Syncon
Public Delphi
Future Search Conference
Groupware
III. How to Do Participatory Methods
IV. Strengths and Weaknesses of Participatory Methods
V. Alternative Uses, Combinations, and Frontiers of
Participatory Methods
Appendix: An online Public Delphi Application
Endnotes
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods ii
Acknowledgments
Special contributions that have enhanced this paper have come from: Clem Bezold, President,
Institute for Alternative Futures; Humphrey Taylor, President & CEO; Louis Harris &
Associates, Inc.; Peter Bishop, Professor, Future Studies Program, University of Houston; and
Barry Bluestein consultant; and Mara Di Berardo, “Cultures, languages and Politics of
Communication” Ph.D. and Millennium Project Italian Node, Teramo, Italy. I also wish to
acknowledge helpful comments and insightful remarks provided by the peer reviewers: Pavel
Novacek, Professor, Charles University (Prague) and Palacky University (Olomouc), Czech
Republic; Joseph Coates, former President, Coates & Jarratt of Washington, D.C.; Albert
DeSalvo, Associate, Barn Raisers, New York; Prof. Christopher Dede, Harvard University; and
Terrence O'Donnell, Professor, Salem State College, Massachusetts. Finally, special thanks to
Elizabeth Florescu, Neda Zawahri, and Kawthar Nakayima for project support, Barry Bluestein
for research and computer operations, and Sheila Harty and John Young for editing. Thanks to
all for your contributions.
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 1
I. HISTORY OF PARTICIPATORY METHODS
One might argue that explorations of the future through public participation began three million
years ago in Africa as groups of humans clustered together gazing at the evening sky while
contemplating their fate. These group meetings have evolved into the "palavers" common in
much of Africa today. Other examples might include the citizen assembly for political
discussions in Athens, except that the majority of people - women and slaves - were excluded
from such "public" debate. Surely the vote was an early form of public participation in the
political process. Cited also are modern techniques of public opinion polling and focus groups.
In the 1960s and 70s, more modern participatory methods were developed like charrettes,
Syncons, and various forms of computer-mediated communications. These integrative
techniques are designed for a cross section of the public and/or professional communities to
identify issues, future possibilities, and common aspirations. Such interactions can also generate
consensus on general goals, strategies, and tactics. All the forms of Internet blogs, listservs,
Wikipedia, websites, chat rooms, e-government services, and collaborative software have
dramatically increased public participation in the policy process and broadened the interaction
globally.
No one quite knows the first time someone thought to quantify or qualify people's opinions. In
the United States, polling goes back to the 1880s; in July 1824, the Harrisburg Pennsylvanian
reported a straw vote taken at Wilmington, Delaware (USA), "without discrimination of parties."
Use of original marketing research by an ad agency shows up in early 1879, with questionnaires
mailed in 1895 by Harlow Gale of the University of Minnesota (USA) to obtain public opinions
on advertising1. Projections of probable opinions of the many from the few remained a mystery
of this type of research and, at first, produced skepticism from newspaper editors and the public.
The advent of the telephone and, later, the computer propelled public opinion research and
market research to a respectable and high-profile multi-billion dollar business of today.
Group facilitation techniques are widely used in many participation methods, such as charrettes,
Syncons, Future Search Conferences, and computer-mediated communications drawing on social
psychology. Many of these techniques originated with the National Training Laboratories
(NTL) in Bethel, Maine (USA).2
Charrette is a French word meaning "little cart." A little cart was originally used during the 19th
century by art and architectural students to carry their work to the university in Paris. Like
students today, they did not always make the deadline and would jump in the charrette to finish
their design. As they moved along the country roads en route to the university, farmers,
innkeepers, and everyone else they passed would suggest improvements - a little more red here,
a little less green there. Hence, the final work would be a "charrette design" with input by the
general public against a tight deadline.3 Architects used the principle to involve the client in the
design. Later in the 1960s, city and educational planners in the United States who found
themselves caught in contradictory situations between the mayor's office and the public would
bring them together in charrettes to forge agreements about the future.
In December 1971, the first public participatory process specifically designed for long-range
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Participatory Methods 2
futures work was invented by Barbara Hubbard and John Whiteside in the United States. Called
SYNCON for Synergetic Convergence, most Syncons were conducted during the 1970s by The
Committee for the Future on live television and addressed the general future of civilization with
some focused issues, such as the future of the space program, technology and society, the future
of energy, as well as more geographically focused and specific issues like youth ethnic conflict
in Los Angeles and national planning in Jamaica.
The history of the Delphi process is explained in another section in this series specifically on the
Delphi. Its earliest use was for participation of experts rather than a cross section of the public;
however, there is no reason why the public cannot be involved in a Delphi process through
public media, as explained later in this chapter. Simulations and games are also useful for
interaction in both small and large group settings and can be played by groups that are
geographically dispersed. The history and use of a simulation and gaming approach to
participatory methods is the subject of a different paper by that name, in this series and hence
will not be repeated here.
Computer software for group collaboration (or "groupware") is intended for people who are
geographically dispersed and might not otherwise work with each other. One approach was
invented by Murray Turoff in the 1960s for the U.S. Department of Defense's ARPANET
(Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), which was the forerunner of Internet. This
computer conferencing software was introduced in the early 1970s to the American public
through the White House's Price and Wage Control Commission and several years later with
support from the National Science Foundation through the New Jersey Institute of Technology
and called EIES (Electronic Information Exchange System).4 EIES had messaging, conferencing,
and shared data base capabilities for group editing and polling. From this software sprang many
variations of computer conferencing, bulletin boards, and international computer network
software widely used today (now growing at 200 percent per year).
A major contributor to the human-computer group participatory methods was Doug Engelbart at
Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), now working through the Doug Engelbart
Institute < http://www.dougengelbart.org/ >. His invention of the computer mouse and the
combinations of collaborative software he and his team developed gave birth to many
innovations we enjoy today,such as: two-dimensional display editing; in-file object addressing,
linking; hypermedia; outline processing; flexible view control; multiple windows; cross-file
editing; integrated hypermedia e-mail; hypermedia publishing; document version control;
shared-screen teleconferencing; computer-aided meetings; formatting directives; context-
sensitive help; distributed client-server architecture; uniform command syntax; universal "user
interface" front-end module; multi-tool integration; grammar-driven command language
interpreter; protocols for virtual terminals; remote procedure call protocols; and compilable
"Command Meta Language."
Engelbart is currently guiding an enthusiastic team of volunteer professionals in designing
prototype open-hyperdocument systems (OHS), one of which is the State of the Future Index
detailed in a separate chapter in this series.
The first national system for general public participation via computers was Minitel in France.
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Participatory Methods 3
To save the cost of printing and distribution of telephone books, simple computer
communications terminals were distributed at no cost. Soon, people began communicating via
these new terminals and developed very personal messages called “hot chatting.” Another form
of groupware called IBIS (Issue Based Information System) was first developed by Horst Rittel
et al. in the early 1970s. IBIS provides a simple, yet formalized structure to deal with complex
issues that do not readily lend themselves to the traditional linear approach of collecting and
analyzing data then defining and implementing a solution. Highly advanced software systems
are able to display issues, related positions, and supporting or negating arguments, graphically,
using hypertext links in a flexible and evolving network that supports fluid responses and
decisionmaking.
II WHAT ARE PARTICIPATORY METHODS?
This chapter examines participatory processes to explore both possible and desirable futures.
Participation can involve a group in one location, meeting face-to-face, or geographically and
temporally dispersed but connected by telecommunications. This chapter gives more emphasis to
larger group processes that can be used by a nation or region. The results of these processes tend
to be more normative (what the future should be) than analytic (what the future might be, based
on empirical conditions of past and present). Such processes can identify the aspirations of a
people and general strategies to achieve them but are not as good for making specific plans.
More analytic methods, discussed elsewhere in this series, should be used to provide input to
these processes so that people are not dreaming in a vacuum. In the 1950s, it was widely
believed that, once colonialism was defeated, Africa would prosper quickly. When this did not
happen, pessimism grew to weaken idealistic efforts necessary for African prosperity. Similarly,
in the 1980s, it was widely believed that, once communism was defeated, the Second World
would attract vast financial investment from the First World. As this did not happen as fast as
expected, pessimism grew in Central and Eastern Europe. The normative vision produced in
participatory processes should be created in dialog with those who do the more analytic research
to avoid unrealistic expectations and create more effective strategies.
Some argue that the degree to which the recipients of a decision are involved in making the
decision is the degree to which the decision will be accepted by the public. Conversely, the
degree to which the decision makers are involved in the citizen process is the degree to which
the conclusions will be implemented with ease and speed. The greater the range of alternative
futures considered in the process, the more likely it is that the conclusions will have a positive
and lasting impact. Hence, the purpose of participatory processes is to improve decision making.
Such processes can also educate participants and build consensus for action.
Once people genuinely and actively participate, the process is seldom neat and tidy, especially if
important and controversial issues are raised. Anger will and should flow and unlikely ideas will
be aired. Only if this kind of free-for-all occurs––and is allowed to occur––will participants
recognize that they have neither the time nor the interest to make comments and decisions about
everything. This leads to a new sense of focus, responsibility, and cooperation, but only if the
previous phase is allowed to run its course. Good facilitation can reduce the time taken to reach
this awareness and can avoid unproductive disintegration of the argument.
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Participatory Methods 4
Professional planners often feel threatened by the thought of greater public involvement in
policymaking and planning. The detail in a plan from a planning department far exceeds the
conclusions of a public process. But planners are often out of touch with the feelings of the
people. If the public process sets the criteria for planning (i.e., the aspirations), then planners can
use those guidelines without feeling that their territory is invaded. Plans can then be evaluated in
the next round of public process, creating a partnership between the planners and those for whom
the planning is done. This sequence is not only important for planners to improve their work as a
result of feedback, but also for the public to accept the result as "their" plan.
Public hearings are often used to collect selected feedback from the public and are a
participatory method; however, since one person testifies at a time - even in a geographically
dispersed and simultaneous process––the percentage of those involved is small. Such hearings
can indeed collect valuable input, but they give the impression that the public's voice was heard
when, statistically, public option polling is more representative. An exception was the hearing
process in Canada that was augmented by a team going to the Alaskan Aleuts to discuss the
issues involved in the Alaska pipeline.5 The mix of hearings and small group processes is what
made it more representative. Small group processes tend not to claim that they represent the
aspirations and strategies of the general public. Such processes may be appropriate for small or
large groups and/or for meetings in one location or in multi-locations. The following chart
classifies some of the techniques discussed in this paper:
Figure 1. Classification system for participatory methods
SMALL GROUP (1-100)
LARGER GROUP (100+)
(hundreds to thousands)
MEETING IN
ONE
LOCATION
Focus Groups, Future Search
Conferences, Consensor,
TeamFocus, VisionQuest,
Simulation-Gaming
Charrette, Syncon, Simulation-
Gaming, Voting
MEETING IN
MULTI-
LOCATIONS
Computer Groupware:
Collaboratories, Integrated
Multi-media, Simulation-
Gaming
Option Polling, Syncon, Public
Delphi, Simulation-Gaming,
Voting
With the advent of low-cost radio, copy machines, satellite television, fax, Internet, and cyber
cafés, the majority of the general public anywhere in the world can easily inform itself on global
affairs. As these technological capacities become more interactive and less costly, more people
will become involved in the decision-making processes that shape their future. This growth
creates demand for social technologies of freedom. 6
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Participatory Methods 5
Focus Groups and Opinion Polling
An opinion poll or survey asks specific questions of a random sample or a specific quota of the
public. This process provides objective statistics of public opinion. With large enough samples
of the public, differences in the hopes, fears, and priorities of different groups can be compared.
Polls are useful for exploring attitudes and registering preferences and priorities about specific
sets of choices.
Focus groups are usually conducted by a researcher or trained group leader who guides the
conversation among a small group of respondents. A list of topics, which takes the place of a
formal questionnaire, allows respondents to talk at length in their own words and at their own
level of understanding. Discussion can range freely to include spontaneous topic changes or
comments that were not foreseen as relevant by the researcher. Group leaders also have the
opportunity to seek clarification or amplification where necessary.
Charrette
Charrette is an intensive face-to-face process carefully designed to bring people from various
segments of society into consensus within a short period of time. The pre-charrette planning
breaks the main issue into its component parts. These parts become groups that periodically
report to the whole. Feedback from the whole on these group reports is then addressed in the
next round of group discussions. This sequence is repeated until consensus is reached at the
final deadline for a report of the whole to whomever - the news media, government officials, or
the larger public drawn to the final event through media coverage of the process. Charrettes vary
in size, from 50 to over 1,000 people, and in time, from one day to two weeks.7
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Participatory Methods 6
Figure 2. Charrette process pulses back and forth from small groups to the large or whole
until general consensus is reached
CHARRETTE
SYNCON
Syncon is the most future-oriented and holistic of the participatory processes. It was originally
designed to answer the questions: what future could all people work toward, and what
misunderstandings need resolution prior to such collaboration? If a diverse group could come
together, share their dreams, and find common ground, then new awareness might be generated
that could accelerate progress for all. The inner sections of the Syncon Wheel (see Figure 3
below) represent the different orientations or major elements of our fragmented societies. The
outer sections represent growing potentials of civilization. People meet in groups to explore the
future and then merge with other groups to build a composite future that integrates these
different orientations.
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Participatory Methods 7
Figure 3. The SYNCON Wheel
The process begins with small groups, merges to larger composite groups, and finally becomes
one total group. This sequence occurs inside a huge pre-designed wheel-like environment
highlighting our present fragmented society. Removable walls between groups are spokes of the
wheel. The inner sections of the wheel - social needs, technology, environment, government,
production, and other regions - represent functional areas of any culture, nation, or community.
The outer sections represent the "growing edge" of future potentials in biology, physics,
information, extraterrestrial, political/economic theory, human nature, the arts, and unexplained
phenomena. This three-and-one-half-day process is usually on live television with computer
communications to link those unable to be present at the Syncon location.
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Participatory Methods 8
Figure 4. The Syncon process begins with small groups, merges to larger composite groups,
then to one group of the whole
Small groups merge to larger composite groups to one total group
Each SYNCON section has:
a discussion guide to provide a rational framework for identifying goals, needs, and
resources;
a coordinator;
several leading experts;
interactive television to coordinate the hub with the other sections; the hub, in turn,
communicates with the external community by live television.
Although 50 to 500 can participate inside the Syncon wheel, thousands can participate by
telephone while watching television at home and calling in questions or comments. Evening
sessions are artistic expressions of the future through theater, music, dance, humor, and light
shows, giving participants time to reflect on the day.
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Participatory Methods 9
Public Delphi
The Delphi is a repeating questionnaire that allows respondents to react to each other's
judgments. This method is explained more fully in the Delphi paper in this series. Although the
Delphi is usually conducted among a preselected and carefully screened panel of "experts," it
could also be used with the general public through Internet, newspapers, or on the radio. Such
"public" Delphis could be used to identify local or national aspirations. See the Appendix for an
application in Italy. Internet websites or newspapers could collect and publish the public's views
through a series of repeating questionnaires. These questionnaires could also be discussed and
shared on public radio and/or television. The public Delphi is an open meeting that lets ideas,
rather than personalities, be persuasive.
Unlike a one-shot poll, the Delphi consists of several rounds of questionnaires. The first
questionnaire could be announced on a public website, printed as a newspaper column, or read
over the radio. It could ask the general public about their aspirations for the future of the
country. E-Government websites would be one logical vehicle for this. The responses to the first
round are condensed as the second round of the public Delphi. This second round is announced
at the website, printed in the newspaper column and/or read over the radio, and asks the public to
rank these future goals or give more specifics. This process can continue for as many rounds or
as long as desired, identifying where national consensus exists and where the public is well or
poorly informed, and helping planners identify national values and priorities.8
With the spread and merger of the Internet with mobile telephones, such public Delphis could
become self-organizing and represent an emergent form of democratic processes.
Future Search Conferences
A variety of approaches - like strategic planning, visioning processes, consensus building, and
futures issues management - are available for groups of 10 to 50 people.9 For the purpose of
simplification, one approach - the Future Search Conference - will be discussed as an example,
because it integrates elements of others. Because of its pulsation between small and full group
sessions to find agreement among a broad cross-section of people, the process is similar to a
charrette but more structured. The search conference was developed by Fred Emery, a systems
scientist from Australia in the 1960s,10 to find common ground among a group of 30 to 65
people. The more specialized Future Search Conference was developed by Marvin R. Weisbord
in the early 1980s to create future vision and strategy among a diverse group of people. The
two- to three-day future search conference is facilitated by two professionals and has five phases:
1) identification and discussion of global trends (desirable and probable); 2) analysis of relevant
trends and how they will affect their organization; 3) projections of how the organization will
evolve based on these trends; 4) future design of the organization; and 5) generation of strategies
to achieve this new design.
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Participatory Methods 10
Groupware
Computer software that connects groups of people to collaborate on the same project is
commonly known as "groupware." This capability is called "Computer-Mediated
Communication" by Murray Turoff, the inventor of computer conferencing in the 1960s who put
the Delphi process on computer networks.
When groupware is used specifically as a participatory decision system, it is referred to as a
"group decision support system" (GDSS). In scientific research settings, groupware that
connects research workers in different locations to the same set of data bases for multi-media
teleconferencing is increasingly referred to as a "collaboratory." Generally, these systems allow
for electronic mail (both one-to-one and one-to-many), shared editing of documents, common
data base access, and graphic systems to visualize the work in progress. For information on
collaboratories see: <http://www.scienceofcollaboratories.org>.
More specific groupware functions include:
Simultaneous collection and display of members’ responses to questions and issues, so
that all responses are available to stimulate new ideas and improve thinking
Organization of electronic brainstorming sessions or other sources into defined categories
for further analysis
Arrangement of group ideas into a graphical or spatial outline format on which members
of the group can individually add to or comment on the developing outline
Evaluation of alternatives by ranking a list on a scale according to criteria generated by
the group, which could be number of people affected, extent of impact, ability to effect
policy, etc.)
Communication by electronic mail as an aside to another member (or members) of the
group
Creation of a group dictionary to establish consensus on terminology, thus avoiding mis-
communication due to incorrect assumptions by individuals employing differing
connotations
Electronic links (hypertext database) between documents, issues, terms, and definitions
through which group members are able to select a highlighted node in order to activate its
link to cross-referenced definitions, concepts, or documents
Simultaneous collaboration on the creation, editing, or annotation of the same document.
Local groups can now participate with individuals at great distances given the options made
possible by the growth of the Internet, which connects computer networks around the world and
allows groupware to be downloaded, plus the falling prices for computer terminals, and the
recent political support for the "international electronic highway."
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Participatory Methods 11
III. HOW TO DO PARTICIPATORY METHODS
When selecting a specific method or designing a process, the following general questions and
considerations should be kept in mind.
1. Success. What are the criteria for success from the process? Would success be an
agreement or a single goal, decisions for direct implementation or the generation and
acknowledgment of the plausibility of several scenarios? Is the expectation to give advice to
decision makers or to educate the public about the issues as an impetus to create long-range
plans? Is the intent of the process to produce a written document approved by the participants
for submission to some authority or is the process a one-time activity, an initial step toward
further processes, or even a periodic or continuing process? Many purposes can be served, such
as: assisting an advanced technology research team to design their plans; collecting information
from citizens on their aspirations; determining reactions to specific plans developed elsewhere;
or sharing views to create a new direction for many purposes.
2. Future Orientation. How will the process ensure that long-term considerations do not
get lost in arguments about who was right or wrong about the past? All too often people say,
"before we talk about the future, we have to understand the past." Then the time runs out and
nothing useful was discussed about the future to make better decisions today. Discussions of
current decisions should be in the larger context of a range of alternative futures. Leaders of
such processes should be chosen, in part, for their commitment to long-term thinking,
willingness to involve futurists, and openness to genuinely new thought. When possible, a
specific year in the future should provide a perceptual focus. For example, the UN General
Assembly could use the year 2015 as the focus, since that is the year for achieving the UN
Millennium Goals, or the National Long-Term Perspective Studies in Africa could use the year
2025 as the focus, since that is the year for achieving African economic integration as specified
in the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community. The arts should also be involved
(possibly through competitions) to produce music, paintings, T-shirts, and other media to involve
participants in a playful focus on the future.
3. Content. Is the process intended to examine one issue, such as the future of education or
health care, or is it intended to examine a whole range of issues involved in answering the
general future aspirations of a people? Are the conclusions from the process to be a consensus
or a range of options with cost/benefit judgments? Will the agenda be flexible or fixed?
4. Participation. How many people will participate? In what ways? For how long? What
range of knowledge and interests should be represented by the participants? Some processes are
open to whoever wants to participate, as with public Delphis and can be with charrettes and
Syncons. Other processes are open only to people institutionally related and pre-selected, such
as the board of directors of a corporation or all the permanent secretaries of government. Still
other processes try to select a new group that might never have worked together before.
Selection processes could include: literature searches; contests with a prize for the best thinking
on some topic; self-selection by those naturally attracted to the issue or process; or
recommendations from persons appropriate or institutions relevant to the participatory process,
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Participatory Methods 12
asking those recommended the same question until a pattern of simultaneous recommendations
and referrals occurs.
5. Integrity. This ingredient is the most important. How to ensure the integrity of the
process is the most difficult and sensitive question to answer. If the process is manipulated to
force a previously decided conclusion, then participants will feel used and betrayed and conflict
could follow. The initiators of the process must be interested in the whole picture not just a part.
For example, if a participatory process were designed to create an agreement on what energy
system or systems should be developed over the next 25 years to reduce the "greenhouse effect,"
then the initiators should not come from only the solar power lobby or the nuclear industry. The
initiators should earn a reputation of being "even handed." The integrity of the coordinator of
the process is even more important than the initiator's. The coordinator's integrity is defined as
the willingness to involve the full range of views and to allow the process to determine its own
direction toward the purpose. The best techniques will produce fraudulent results if hidden
agendas are allowed to circumvent genuine discussion. Warren Avis11 (of rent-a-car fame)
defined consensus as occurring when "sufficient information makes the answer obvious to
everyone." Integrity is a necessary condition for consensus.
6. Who should decide how these questions are answered and how the answers are
integrated into the participatory process? A steering committee is best, whose members
represent a range of views and expertise relevant to the purpose of the process. The steering
committee's function will be detailed further as individual methods and techniques are explained
below.
After these general questions are addressed, the designers of the process should ask more specific
questions. Will the process:
1. involve the shy nontalker
2. allow for innovation during the process
3. create one-way/two-way or group communication
4. allow time to reflect and save face if an individual's mind is changed
5. mix participants to break up cliques
6. make people feel comfortable enough to express private thoughts in public
7. develop a sense of interdependency or community by sharing common ground
8. make necessary information available
9. ensure that people are encouraged to think long-range (25 years or more)
10. encourage assessment of secondary and tertiary consequences of actions from alterative
futures
11. include all perspectives on an issue through people representing those perspectives
12. have decision makers from government, business, and other authorities interact with the
people affected by their decisions
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Participatory Methods 13
13. connect the implementation system to the issue, such as the legislature or city council
14. avoid threatening individuals and groups
15. insist on clearly stated conclusions to prevent later misinterpretation
16. guarantee full-news media coverage
17. empower all participants equally in the process
18. create an environment for institutional decision makers to see the process as a positive
opportunity?
Opinion Polling and Focus Groups
Opinion polling is structured for questioning large numbers of people, usually representative of a
larger population. This technique is based on questionnaires administered by interviews. The
questions are precise and lend themselves to statistical analysis. For example, a question might
look like this: "On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the strongest agreement, 5 mixed or no opinion,
and 0 the strongest disagreement: Do you want your government to work for African economic
integration?" Or the question could be a simple yes or no: "Are you in favor of African economic
integration by the year 2025?" These polls are usually conducted by telephone to produce
statistical data from a wide cross section of the public. Alternatively, they can be conducted by
interviewing people in busy locations. The opinion poll is definitive and gathered under
controlled circumstances. Each interview must be conducted in the same way, with the same
questions, asked in the same order, so that the researcher may compare the accumulated data.
Conducted now in both industrialized and developing countries, opinion polling has taken on
global proportions. Louis Harris and Associates conducted an opinion survey in 16 countries for
the United Nations Development Progamme (UNDP).12 These countries included Argentina,
Brazil, China, Germany, Hungary, India, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway,
Saudi Arabia, Senegal, United States, and Zimbabwe. 8,325 interviews were conducted using the
same questionnaire to measure environmental attitudes of both the general public and leaders.
Between 300 and 1,250 interviews were conducted per country among the general public.
Approximately 50 interviews per country were conducted among the leadership. In developing
countries, the samples were limited to urban areas. In Saudi Arabia, the sample was limited to
men. Methods to identify interviewees among the general public included samples from electoral
registers and area probability. Leaders were selected from lists of elected and appointed
government officials, civil servants, and leaders in the news media, business, religion, trade
unions, and the medical field. Interviews among the public were conducted by telephone
(census-based random-digit dialing) and random-walk techniques in areas designated from quota
samples.
The focus group technique uses a small group to explore issues in depth. The focus groups are
usually composed of eight to twelve people and conducted by an interviewer who uses a broad
topic guide with as few direct questions as possible. Individuals in the group are encouraged to
speak as personally and subjectively as possible. The interviewer should encourage free
expression of attitudes throughout the approximately hour-and-a-half discussion. The interviewer
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Participatory Methods 14
can use questioning techniques to encourage individuals to reveal attitudes in depth and with
emotion. The interviewer should also try to establish the range of reactions by prompting
respondents to look at different sides of an issue. An interviewer can use techniques to
encourage respondents to express their views indirectly as well. In a focus group, the sample
should cover a wide spectrum of people. Generally about eight is desirable; too many make the
group unmanageable. The discussions should be held in an environment that is relaxed and
informal at a time that is reasonable for the invited respondents. Group discussions are usually
led by the researcher who is going to interpret the information and write the report. Reports on
qualitative research have to be largely impressionistic, since they are based on small samples and
unstructured data. The group leader, however, does not need any advanced skills. Leading group
discussions is easily learned with the chief aim to keep the discussion on track and to air
different topics that arise within the overall discussion.
The focus group is impressionistic and flexible in order to explore fully and diagnose the
participants' views and feelings. The aim of interviewing in qualitative work is to ensure that
respondents feel able to talk freely and at length about themselves and their lives with enough
personal intensity or intimacy. For this reason, hypotheses can only be tentative. The depth in
coverage of individual views provides a useful complement to the quantitative polls.
Focus groups are not just for industrialized countries. Sensitive subjects on political transition in
Mozambique were addressed during the second half of June 1993. Louis Harris and Associates
conducted 12 focus groups totaling 173 people in 11 different locations in four provinces in
northern, central, and southern Mozambique, among 10 language groups. The results were made
available to both the leadership and the general public. Such grassroots in-depth analysis of
opinion is a new form of public participation in Africa.13
The focus group requires more interpretive skill at the source, where the opinion poll produces
statistical data, which can then be interpreted within a larger context. In both cases,
measurements are made of people's opinions with the focus group representing a narrow segment
and the opinion poll representing a broader population.
Charrette
The first step in a charrette is to identify the need for a new direction. Any person or group,
whether government or concerned citizens, can identify a need. They must, however, accept the
responsibility for coming forward to work toward that new direction. These initiators who
identify a direction evolve into the steering committee, after raising all the necessary funds for
the charrette. This committee should have representatives of all areas involved in implementing
the new direction as well as those affected by it, yet stay small enough to be a working group
(about eight to twelve, not including group facilitator who will join later in the pre-charrette
planning). If additional leaders are needed but are not likely to work on the steering committee,
then a special advisory committee can be formed.
Barry Schuttler has been involved in 50 charrettes and lists the following critical factors of
success: 14
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1. Include all decision makers relevant to the planning effort
2. Select an area for planning that has a constituency, a political base of residents
3. Include the community residents in the decision making
4. Conduct the charrette planning within the community and be aware of the political
realities when you begin
5. Use an experienced charrette manager who has directed the process in other
communities.
Pre-charrette planning can vary from one month to a year depending on how many days the
charrette will last, how complex the issue is, and how many participants are expected. A three-
day charrette of 300 would take approximately three months of pre-planning; a five-day charrette
of 1,000 would take approximately six to eight months of pre-planning.
During the pre-charrette planning, the steering committee should meet weekly to: (1) identify the
four to ten sub-elements of the issue that become the four to ten discussion groups during the
charrette; (2) list the key questions for each group; (3) agree on what is a proper range of views
on these questions; (4) find people to participate in the charrette who will represent this range;
(5) gather all available and relevant information to answer these questions; (6) select a group
facilitator, outside futurists, consultants, and other necessary resource people (such as for
financial management, public relations, media coverage, publicity, music, etc.); and (7) create an
initial design of the process, a budget, and hire a charrette director and administrative staff.
The charrette director is responsible for the final design and management of the process and the
administrative staff. The integrity and reputation of the director is critical to the success of the
process. S/he must have sufficient knowledge of group dynamics to maintain that integrity
throughout the charrette. Additional characteristics for a director include ability to work in a
non-authoritarian manner, deal with ambiguity, quickly analyze and intervene in the process
when necessary, and be flexible.
Committee facilitators should have the same characteristics as the director and be familiar with
the sub-issues of their committees. Once selected, they should become members of the steering
committee. Each facilitator should have one to three consultants who are leading experts in the
sub-issue and can answer any questions or find pertinent information for the committee during
the charrette.
The rest of the participants in the charrette either focus on one committee throughout the process
or rotate among committees. The focus participants are a core of people in each committee who
stay with that committee throughout the charrette. They can take on specific duties to support the
committee. Some could be original initiators of the process or members of the steering
committee. Approximately one-third of each committee should be focus participants. The other
two-thirds are general participants who have no formal role in the charrette. A schedule is
recommended for participants to rotate from committee to committee throughout the process. It
is also to be expected that the rotation schedule will break down as these participants find their
interest areas. Nevertheless, the schedule provides a process and a structure by which
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participants become involved in the charrette and can help distribute participation more evenly.
Participants should not break for lunch but eat in working groups. Breaks should be according to
need, not schedule, so that loss of momentum can be kept to a minimum.
Jury Day is the climax of the charrette, when the final presentations by all committees are given.
Media coverage of this is highly recommended. News coverage should also be encouraged
during the charrette but should be concentrated, like a press conference, on Jury Day. The
charrette director should allow no ambiguity in the final presentation and no overlap of
committee reports. The final presentation should be a holistic, integrated, and internally
consistent normative vision with strategy and general implementations schedule.
The trick of a charrette is to eliminate the distinction between "them" and "us." No restrictions
on participation exist, only a strict deadline. If people argue too long without reaching a
consensus, then no report is made, but when the decisionmakers, private individuals, and
"experts" are able to reach consensus, it comes as no surprise that the recommendations are
received favorably.
SYNCON
Similar to pre-charrette planning, pre-Syncon planning begins with a steering committee that is a
microcosm of the participation desired for the Syncon. This committee conducts a similar set of
tasks as outlined in the section on charrettes. Syncon has some major additions of responsibility,
such as producing internal and external interactive television, constructing a specially built
environment, and creating art exhibits, evening music, and theater productions, in the Syncon
environment. 15
A Syncon is only as good as its participants. The steering committee should create a list of the
knowledge, institution, and views that each section of the Syncon wheel needs to address the
area properly, and nominate people who can fulfill those needs. A steering committee member is
assigned to recruit participation based on this profile for each section of the Syncon, recommend
section coordinators, and help write a discussion guide for the group. Discussion guides for each
section should be one page, giving an overview of the future and the general situation of that
section as well as specific tasks and procedures for the section to follow.
The steering committee has to select a location with enough space for the Syncon wheel and
television lighting and with doors wide enough for moving equipment. Adjacent rooms will be
used for a studio and anchor desk and another for the video sphere. Access to cable or broadcast
connections is also needed. Internal or closed-circuit television requirements for a full Syncon
are quite substantial: closed-circuit cameras to connect wheel sections visually; color monitors;
microphones; speakers; a Synconsole that integrates these elements for the Syncon coordinator
and staff to watch, hear, and speak with each group; and sufficient lighting equipment. External
television requires a camera production unit, anchor position, video recorders, shotgun
microphones, video library of futuristic images and concepts, and an experienced television
crew.
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Figure 6. Synconsole being used by Alvin Toffler, author of the Future Shock and Third
Wave, and more recently Revolutionary Wealth.
Figure 7. Flow Diagram of the Television system of SYNCON
Just prior to the beginning of the Syncon, while the wheel is being built and the television system
is being installed, a meeting of the section coordinators is held to set the proper tone for the
process.16 They are to think of themselves as orchestra conductors bringing forth the very best
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from the participants in a constructive direction and toward an initial report within one and a half
days. At that point, half the walls are taken down and groups merge: technology with
environment; production with government; etc., to form joint committees. These coordinators
become joint coordinators and have one day to deliver joint reports. These joint reports are given
just before all the walls are taken down in the middle of the fourth day. The last activity is an
open discussion by the total group on the impacts of the joint reports on each other and of the
group's general vision of the future.
The Syncon coordinator keeps track of the whole process from the Synconsole as well as
walking around the wheel, constantly communicating with the television producer and director,
and holding daily meetings with the coordinators. Critical needs often create painful and
prolonged confrontations. Should this occur, the participants involved will be invited to develop
special presentations to the "whole" when all the walls come down on the last day. Alternatively,
deadlocks are handled by ad hoc panels created by the Syncon coordinator. Two sections can see
and hear each other via the Synconsole if mutual issues need discussion or opportunities
confirmed. Coordinators are encouraged to use any group facilitation techniques they wish and
to move their authority and leadership into the group. For example, if someone in a section is
concerned about how they will merge with the neighbor section after the first walls come down,
the coordinator could ask that person to act as liaison with that committee prior to merger.
Syncon can be a very flexible process and coordinators can divide their committee (or joint
committees) into temporary subgroups as necessary, then gather the groups back together to
check progress.
Throughout the process, short (15 minute) presentations are given within specific committees to
share significant ideas from leaders in their fields as factors to consider. By telephone, TV
viewers can direct a question or comment to a discussion they are watching in a certain section
of the wheel, or they can ask questions of experts at Syncon, which may be answered
immediately, live, on the air. To balance the intense intellectual work during the day, evening
events provide entertainment, reflection, and relaxation.
Public Delphi
A detailed description of how to do a Delphi is the subject of another paper by that name in this
series on futures methodology. Hence, a detailed description will not be repeated here. The
essential difference between a regular Delphi and a public Delphi is that participants select
themselves by responding to the public Delphi, and the general public can know what ideas and
judgments are being considered WHILE the Delphi is occurring. Anonymity can still be
guaranteed in the public Delphi by not requiring respondents to identify themselves.
To begin through an e-government Internet website, the leader of the country might hold a press
conference in person, which could be simultaneously broadcasted in streaming video from the e-
government website, and would give a welcoming message and define the challenge to the
public. Non-governmental initiatives on the Internet would have to be announced through some
publicly acknowledged institution or combination of institutions to get serious attention. To
begin through the newspaper, a leading columnist or journalist known for being even-handed and
interested in the public welfare might initiate the activity through a general invitation in a special
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Participatory Methods 19
column in the newspaper. This initial invitation to the public identifies the general topic, how
long and in what form the newspaper would like to receive responses, how these responses will
be fed back into a second round and subsequent rounds to be published in the newspaper column,
when the deadlines are for each round, how often the results of each round will be published, and
how the conclusions will be part of other public policy processes.
A public Delphi through radio would be introduced by a talk show host with a similar reputation
of integrity as counterpart. This introduction could be a regular announcement at the beginning
of each talk show, including all items mentioned above for the newspaper introduction but
relevant to the radio format. The talk show host would follow this standard announcement by
giving a summary of the previous shows and then invite listeners to call in their comments.
Unlike the newspaper version, the talk show host can discuss the ideas expressed and receive
immediate feedback from other callers.
Future Search Conferences
Once an institution, nation, or corporation identifies its need for future direction, a future search
conference can decide the details of the new direction and strategy to make the necessary
changes.17 As with other participatory processes, the participants in a future search conference
should represent a cross section of those most critical to the implementation and impact of the
new direction. These conferences tend to have 30 to 65 participants. The conference is usually
two or three days and managed by two facilitators. The two facilitators should be experienced in
group process techniques and sensitive to both the intellectual content of the conference and the
emotional status of the participants. The first responsibility of the participants is to define the
problem to be addressed or the purpose of the search.
The conference process has five phases: 1) trend identification; 2) impact of trends on the
conference task; 3) evolution of the task; 4) future designs; and 5) strategies. Each phase takes
about three hours. Hence, the whole process is approximately 15 hours over two or three days.
Phase 1: Trend identification. The conference as-a-whole identifies the major global trends
through a brainstorming exercise on population, urbanization, miniaturization,
internationalization, etc. These trends are written on flip charts and hung on the wall.
Participants divide into four or so groups of about eight people to analyze the trends in terms of
desirability and plausibility. They then create both normative and most likely scenarios. The
groups reconvene and share their scenarios. With the help of the facilitators, common themes are
used to build the total group's normative and most probable scenarios.
Phase 2: Impact of trends on the conference task. The conference as-a-whole identifies just
those trends that are most relevant to the conference task. The same brainstorming exercise is
used and the trends are written on flip charts and hung on the wall, as before. Participants divide
again into groups to analyze these more specific trends in terms of desirability and plausibility
and create both normative and most likely scenarios. The groups reconvene to identify the
common themes and build the total group's normative and most probable scenarios of the
conference task.
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Phase 3: Evolution of the task. The participants engage in open discussion of the task. How did
it begin, what are its elements and their internal relations, what are the strengths and weaknesses
involved, how have the constraints changed over time. The product of this phase is a time line
showing the evolution of the task, complete with the events that shaped the current situation.
Phase 4: Future Designs. Participants divide into small groups and identify the most desirable
elements of the task: new systems, policies, characteristics, or whatever participants think is
desirable. As new ideas are developed in each group, they are passed on to the other groups for
selection. The groups that create the ideas do not decide on their acceptability. In this way, ideas
selected are more likely to be implemented. All participants reconvene and put the selected ideas
into an overall scenario and future design.
Phase 5: Strategies. Participants divide into small groups. Each group is given the same overall
scenario and future design document generated by the previous phase. The groups generate a list
of strategies to achieve the new desirable design. These lists are circulated among the other
groups who make the selections, similar to the previous phase. During this selection process, the
small groups can further refine their strategies. Next, the groups are reformed around the
strategies. The strategies are grouped, and people join these groups to give further detail to the
strategies. In this self-selection process, what will receive support becomes clear, and unpopular
strategies drop out. These new action groups prepare their reports to the total group. The total
group reassembles, receives the reports of each action group, then engages in a discussion of the
whole to analyze the effectiveness of the strategies proposed. If necessary, remaining
disagreements over strategies can be referred back to the original trend analysis groups for
resolution. In either case, the total group concludes with each participate explaining what s/he
will do the next day in the workplace to begin the implementation of the new strategies. This last
task forms the basis for a strategic monitoring or auditing process.
Future search conferences, like any participatory process for strategic planning, should not allow
participants to be interrupted by telephone calls, visitors, or other meetings. They should be
required to participate in all sessions or to be an observer. The focus throughout the conference
should be on common agreement and common vision, rather than on deciding who is right or
wrong.
Groupware
The easiest way to begin using participatory processes via computer communication is through
the use of e-mail, listservs, feedback discussions on Web sites, and other systems connected by
the Internet.18 In this way, many people can work together at very low cost, even though
participants might be located around the world.
A simple variation of computer-mediated communication is the Consensor or PC Voter of The
Futures Group.19 This method is used to collect group votes for immediate display to all. Simple
terminals are given to all participants in a meeting. These terminals have two dials: one is
graduated from 0 to 10; and the other is graduated in 25 percent increments from 0 through 100.
Each participant can vote on an item from 0 to 10 and indicate how strongly s/he feels about his
or her vote or how confident s/he is about the item in percentage votes by the second dial. The
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Participatory Methods 21
votes of the group are immediately displayed, leaving no doubt about the group's thinking on the
issue. Previous group votes can be redisplayed. Up to 60 terminals can be supported. This system
allows planners to discover easily how much they know and how strongly they feel about
alternatives facing them. It offers a way to make meetings and public discussions shorter, more
productive, and, at the same time, more democratic and representative of the participants' true
beliefs.
One of the early experimental versions of combining software and environmental design for
participatory planning was TeamFocus by IBM in collaboration with the University of Arizona
(USA). It combines a unique physical environment of computer terminals built into semi-
circular panels or tables allowing 20 to 30 participants to see each other while typing in their
views and randomly and secretly getting others' views. It is a very fast form of computer
conferencing without knowing with whom you are conferencing. In this way, ideas are more
persuasive than personalities. The decision to use such a special room and software tends to
focus the work team even before using this groupware. A more advanced variation is now being
marketed by Group Systems (http://www.groupsystems.com/home).
Jerry Wagner, a pioneer with computer-supported systems in the 1970s, created VisionQuest in
the 1980s, which does not require a special room. Instead, participants can access VisionQuest
through a local area network at different times to shape the agenda, comment on topics, rate
ideas, and communicate anonymously. VisionQuest is completing a multi-media version that
will allow participants to communicate by voice, print, video, and graphics. It is marketed by
Intellect Corporation in Dallas, Texas.
More specialized computer-mediated communications for decision making or Group Decision
Support Systems (GDSS) have their own "look and feel," but the tools they offer participants
have three similar features:20
1. Brainstorming allows individuals to type comments about a particular issue
simultaneously and have them merged into the same file by the computer. The benefits of
electronic brainstorming are perhaps the greatest advantage to GDSS systems. While only one
person can speak at once in a standard meeting, everyone types simultaneously in an electronic
brainstorming session. While most people cannot type as fast as they talk, the parallel inputs still
generate an enormous amount of material. This method also has the advantage of getting the
input accurately recorded without the addition of editing from the group facilitator. A second
advantage is the anonymity that the system offers. Comments are entered without attribution, so
people are more inclined to enter unpleasant or critical comments than they would in a face-to-
face meeting. Thus, results are not only voluminous but more honest.
2. Organizing tools allow individuals to make sense of the many comments entered
during brainstorming by placing them into larger categories. Unfortunately, the current software
tools for this are not yet satisfactorily matching human requirements. Identifying appropriate
categories is difficult and often inappropriate. This difficulty makes selecting which comment
should go into which category nearly arbitrary by computer and very time-consuming by human
judgment.
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Participatory Methods 22
3. Decision software tools allow individuals to record their attitude or judgment
about a number of items in some structured format. These tools include voting, ranking, and
other structured methods of polling people's opinion. The tools do NOT make the decision for
the group, but they do reflect the group's opinion about a set of issues in an anonymous fashion.
The data collected by these tools are usually persuasive in communicating the group mind about
a particular topic.
One such pioneering groupware was CM/1. This groupware allowed a group to create a map or
network of information through fundamental building blocks referred to as issues, positions, and
arguments. An issue is put in the form of a question that the group is to answer: What should the
international development community do to assist African economic integration by the year
2025? A position is a possible solution to the issue: Support the creation of national long-term
prospective studies in African countries. An argument is a statement for or against a position:
Connecting the goal of African integration by 2025 to short- and mid-term planning cannot be
done successfully without national long-term prospective studies. The building blocks of issues,
positions, and arguments are connected by the computer software so each participant can see the
big picture and the information elements that compose it.
Futures research and policy conversations tend to be much more complex than the simple issue
network just illustrated. To support more real and hence complex conversations, issue-based
information systems (IBIS) allow additional relationships to exist between the three basic
elements (issues, positions, and arguments): issues can be created within positions and
arguments that challenge or support, and an issues network can connect to another issues
network. In addition, the software also allows for the use of additional elements: notes,
references, decisions, and views.
Notes allow you to attach commentary to any other elements in the basic issue net.
References allow you to attach pertinent information from external documents.
Decisions allow you to attach consensus statements on the issue.
Views allow you to attach spatial organization and connect two issue nets.
These elements offer a concrete and straightforward communication structure within which to
hold complex conversations among groups of people. These elements are represented by an
object or icon with a label in a hypertext database that contains the information. When you
"open" such an icon, the information it contains is displayed. In this way, you get only the
complexity you need when you need it. CM/1 uses eight different icons. They are used in
combination with one another to organize policy dialog.
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Figure 8. Example of a CM/1 flowchart graphic
Issues-based information systems, such as CM/1, begin with an issue. Throughout the
conversation, other issues may be created as needed. Positions are taken that participants believe
can answer the question at issue. Anyone can enter an argument in response to a position.
Decisions are entered when agreement is reached, attaching the positions and arguments that led
to that decision. Related references, notes, and views can also be attached. This information can
be saved on a diskette, allowing others to review the policy dialog and understand how a
decision was reached.
Although these techniques are still new to the majority of meeting planners today, some argue
that groupware will be as common in the foreseeable future as word processing and speadsheet
software are today.21 As the prices for computers and software continue to fall, schools, post
offices, and shops in the most remote areas in the world may soon allow any citizen to
participate in local and national policy discussions mediated by state-of-the-art groupware. Just
as telephones were often first available to the public in the general stores, so too advanced
groupware could also introduced in similar fashion to the general public. 22
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IV. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF PARTICIPATORY METHODS
The general strengths of any participatory process include: speed of implementation because a
cross section of decision makers and recipients of the decisions worked out the goals, strategies,
objectives, and tactics together; reduced time to make a long-range plan by reducing the interval
between feedback loops of those involved in the planning process; enhanced democratic
processes that result in a more equitable product; and increased probability of success by sharing
commitments and values of the participants and addressing potential conflicts during the process.
The general weaknesses of participatory processes include: superficial analysis; unfair influence
by those more aware of how to manipulate the process; threatening to established power; and
potential to create a new we/they polarity of those who participated and those who did not.
Good facilitation of a participatory process requires that the facilitator keep a clear distinction
between the issues of the process and the issues of the content. These issues must also be kept
distinct in planning such a process. Confusing these makes the process less efficient, and the
content less profound. Most importantly, it can polarize the process, making it a tool of one or
more interests; and hence, lose the public’s trust in the integrity of the process.
The strengths and weaknesses of participatory methods should be understood in context,
including the purposes for which they would be used. Will it be a small group or a large
gathering? Will they meet face-to-face in one location or can the general public share their views
through other means?
Polling is relatively easy to do, people understand the output, and decision makers find polls
immediately useful. The advantage of polling is being able to reach a large number of people
quickly: one can manage ten supervisors of ten pollsters who can easily interview ten people,
giving feedback of 1,000 interviews in one day. The weakness is that wording of the questions
can pre-determine the results and in-depth feeling and analysis is missing. However, cross-
referencing polls can reduce these problems.
Focus groups have the advantage of getting in-depth views from a specific sample of people.
This method is useful for finding out not only what people want but also how and why they want
it. This is an excellent technique to explore what futures are more desirable and why, what are
the key impediments to achieving that future and how. Focus groups do not build consensus.
Their purpose is to collect understanding not generate action or commitment. They are time-
consuming; facilitators are trained and highly skilled; hence, focus groups are expensive per
person involved.
A charrette is a good process for hundreds of people to examine a broad range of issues with
decision makers and recipients for an extended period of time. A charrette has the advantage of
getting people of diverse interests together in one location. This crucible effect has been
successful in generating consensus that is likely to be accepted by the general public and able to
be implemented. After ten years of evaluating rural, suburban, and urban charrettes in the United
States, Barry Schuttler identified the benefits that can be expected from a well-managed
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Participatory Methods 25
charrette. It should:23
1. generate five dollars of contributed professional services for every dollar spent on
planning
2. make recommendations such that 90 percent or more are approved and funded by
authorities
3. reduce the time for completing a project (time saved should range from two years for
individual projects, such as the building of a school, to ten years for large projects, such
as the redevelopment of a central business district)
4. terminate construction moratoriums and obtain public approval for previously defeated
bond issues
5. develop new programs and services that result in funded proposals for new institutions
and that encourage private investment and make tax savings possible
6. organize previously apathetic neighborhoods, equipping them with leaders, plans, and a
working agreement, with government officials approving and funding every
recommendation.
Unfortunately, large-scale processes like charrettes can have problems of translation in a multi-
cultural and/or multi-lingual community. People also might not be able to travel to one location
or stay for three days to a week or two. Charrettes, indeed any large group process, can take
precise and advanced proposals and make them less precise and less advanced so as to be
acceptable to all.
The primary strengths of a Syncon is its ability to help a large number of people share advanced
thinking, rapidly educate them about the general possibilities of the future, create a shared vision
of a desirable future, and come to general agreements about how that future could be created.
Syncons also generate emotional commitments to work toward that future. Syncons give
participants the feeling that the process is "more real," because it is on television. It integrates
intellectual conversation, the arts, and telecommunications into a holistic process. Its
telecommunications allows farther outreach and interaction than just for those inside the Syncon
wheel. Hence, the number of participants is limited only by budget and imagination. Its primary
weakness is that it requires more money and skill than other processes and, hence, is more
difficult to accomplish and replicate. The use of communications technology can intimidate
some participants, especially if those running the equipment are insensitive to this concern.
The primary strength of groupware is its ability to systematically organize and feed back the
group's thinking in useful ways. Groupware currently requires typing, which slows down the
brainstorming process. Some might argue that writing ideas may be more cogent, more
articulate, and more focused on solving the problem under discussion. Yet, if new thinking is the
objective, the quick brainstorming made possible by computers could be enhanced by the use of
voice recognition software, which puts oral conversation into word processing software. As with
any brainstorming session, a process is needed to clarify the intelligence within the flood of
thought.
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Peter Bishop of the Program for the Study of the Future at the University of Houston-Clear Lake,
Texas (USA), has developed a one-workstation version of GDSS, simulating many of the
advantages of the multi-workstation systems. Brainstorming is done verbally for nonsensitive
topics and written comments for sensitive topics. Giving anonymity to participants for sensitive
comments helps get the truth faster; the disadvantage is that ownership and responsibility is
stripped from the thought. Since comments are entered into a portable computer connected to a
printer and a projector, participants receive printed-paper and visual feedback on their
comments. The facilitator helps the group organize their comments through on-line editing and
display with periodic printouts. Finally, decisions are aided by voting, ranking, and rating
through verbal report or paper questionnaires, which are then analyzed with spreadsheets and
displayed with graphic packages. This process does take longer, however, since participants are
not entering their comments themselves. Dr. Bishop notes that this can be overcome with a
judicious selection of extended breaks to allow time for the data input.
Globally dispersed collaboratory systems via the Internet allow flexibility and lower cost per
user than fixed groupware systems, like TeamFocus, that force everyone to be in one location
and carry a high cost. Yet, if the requirement is for quick decision with all participants in one
location for face-to-face agreement, then groupware is valuable.
V. ALTERNATIVE USES, COMBINATIONS, AND FRONTIERS OF
PARTICIPATORY METHODS
As mobile telephones merge with the Internet, countless self-organizing participatory processes
could well become a vehicle for shaping and expressing public opinion and influencing decision
making. Swarms of people using this technology could become a factor in both short-term policy
decision making in legislatures, as well as changing national leadership.
Future forms of collective intelligence should improve participatory effectiveness. Collective
intelligence is an emergent property from the synergies among 1) data, information, knowledge;
2) hardware and software; and 3) human minds that continually learn from feedback to produce
just-in-time knowledge for better decisions than these elements acting alone. Wikipedia is an
early example. A potential application for a global energy collective intelligence is available in
Chapter 5 of 2008 State of the Future.
Meanwhile, Public Delphis, which elicit general aspirations of the public through newspapers,
on the radio, and/or online could be supplemented by polling more specific public opinion. The
output from these combined methods could be fed to focus groups for more in-depth analysis.
Public aspirations and specific issues could also be identified through focus groups, which in
turn could be augmented by using groupware and other computer-mediated communications.
The results of combined participatory methods - public Delphis, polling, and focus groups - can
form the initial set of long-range policy issues that a steering committee of a charrette or Syncon
could use to prepare a larger participatory process. The steering committee's work could be made
more efficient through computer-mediated communications, because groupware allows meetings
when members are not available at the same time and place, keeps records on the development of
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Participatory Methods 27
the planning process, and identifies when agreements are reached and what issues are still
pending and why. Results of the charrettes or other larger-scale face-to-face public participatory
systems could be fed back to policy planners for more detailed analysis linked by computer-
mediated communication.
Groupware like CM/1 could be used to track responses from a public Delphi. As people call in
responses to a radio or television station or mail them to a newspaper, the ideas could be entered
with appropriate software and made publicly available on websites. All the positions relevant to
an issue could be listed, and pro and con arguments for each position could be entered. Comments
could be sent via e-mail or chat rooms per issue. In this way, public comment could be graphically
shown on the Internet and used by television, described on radio, or printed in the newspaper.
A number of national long-range planning efforts have taken place, but few of these have been
processed through the essential decision-making system of the country. UNDP’s African Futures
program did foster national long-range planning activities for many African countries that were
connected to nations’ Ministries of Planning. However, Canada was perhaps the first country to
examine this possibility of creating its own ongoing system during Prime Minister Pierre
Trudeau's administration in 1975-76. The Future Options Room, a U.S. futurist consulting firm,
under contract to the Canadian Ministry of State for Urban Affairs, designed one such approach.
It called for a combination of government analysis and a national public Delphi conducted by the
news media on citizens' attitudes about present problems and future possibilities and priorities.
Figure 9. Example of a national process that includes state policy analysis and public
participation.
T1 During the first phase, the Ministry of State for Urban Affairs (MSUA) prepares policy
briefing and option sheets for a tri-level charrette (TLC) involving metropolitan,
provincial, and federal participants, while newspapers, radio, and television conduct a
public Delphi to generate community feeling for the TLC.
T2 In the second phase, a three-to-six-day TLC evaluates and synthesizes policy options and
public Delphi conclusions for policy recommendations.
T3 During the third phase, newspapers, radio, and television disseminate and evaluate the
results of the TLC, while the MSUA does its own evaluation.
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T4 Next, the media prepare and conduct another series of public Delphis in response to
public reaction to T3. Likewise, MSUA prepares its issues, briefing, and options sheets
from its evaluation of T3 in preparation for the next TLC charrette.
T5 Next TLC charrette.
This explanation is rather simplistic for a complex process. Such a process is intended to be part
of MSUA's normal routine rather than a one-shot effort. Internet websites and chat rooms should
run throughout the process to gather input from individuals whose advice is highly valued but
who are unable or unwilling to participate in any other fashion, e.g., scientists or busy
executives. Collaboration software on the Internet allows the MSUA or the media access to
printouts of sections or entire texts and adds expert opinion that otherwise might not be
incorporated into the process. According to the Future Options Room plan, when
recommendations have received a predetermined minimum acceptance, they would
automatically become policy. The administration in Canada changed before this could be
implemented, but the process serves as a model for other national long-range planning efforts to
create their own.
A new process called the "Citizens Jury" is a unique synthesis of focus groups, hearings, and
trial by jury. Created by the Jefferson Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, (USA), citizens jury is
still in the development stage. Its first use was in the United States during October 1993 to
evaluate President Clinton's health care proposal. Ordinary citizens (24) were randomly-selected
to become the citizens jury. The jury was chosen from "a random pool of 2,000 American adults
to be a microcosm of the nation in age, gender, race, education (as an income indicator),
geographic locale, 1992 presidential preference, and source of health care financing. Jurors were
paid their expenses and a stipend for a week of meetings in Washington, D.C."24
The jury held five days of hearings. They asked over 500 questions to 24 expert witnesses and
three U.S. Senators. Instead of hearings conducted by government officials, these are conducted
by a random sample of citizens. Like a focus group, the citizens could explore their feelings in
great detail, producing a range of reactions -- in this case, as expert testimony on a matter of
public policy. Like a trial by jury, each side of the debate had an advocate. Moderators and
resource persons helped the jury function more smoothly.
The citizen jury, like the other participatory methods profiled in this paper, offers great promise
in its potential to connect people. In addition, new support for finishing the international
electronic highway, the advent of interactive multi-media systems, and super-portable computers
will allow increasingly more individuals and groups to communicate over great distances.
Participating in such processes, people will have data immediately available in print, sound,
graphics, and visual formats. Who was it that said, "information is the currency of democracy"?
In the future participatory systems could include global cyber games with millions of
participants to create policy.
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APPENDIX: AN ONLINE PUBLIC DELPHI APPLICATION
By Mara Di Berardo1
INTRODUCTION (DISTILLED FOR FRM 3.0)
This paper describes an on-line Public Delphi application, run for the Municipality of
Modena, Italy, by using the Partecipa.net e-democracy kit. It focuses on its positive and negative
aspects and will be used as a starting point to define a Participatory Delphi process, also forming
the hypothesis that it could be a point of reference for any other integrated Participatory Social
Planning process.
1. The “Per Via Gallucci” project
New technologies allow the on-line transposition of many convergence2 and participatory
methods, modifying sometimes their communicative structure, as in Turoff Real Time Delphi
(1974), in Ender Open-Space OnLine (2005-2007), in various Design and Budget Games
versions and so on. These on-line applications give interesting instruments for the more general
electronic participation thematic, provided, for instance, by the Italian Regional and Local
Authorities electronic government program and launched by the Italian Minister for Innovation
and Technology Department during the e-government realization.
The following Public Delphi experiments can be inserted in such a field through the regional
Partecipa.net project, submitted to the Cnipa3 national Public Announcement, which aimed,
during 2004, to co-finance digital citizenship projects4. Partecipa.net answers to the necessity to
promote citizens participation in local administrations activities and decisional processes by
using ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies). Coordinated by the Emilia-
Romagna Region and constituted by an aggregation of its territory administrations and other
partners and supporters, the project released an e-democracy kit to the partners to carry out on-
line participatory projects.
The e-democracy kit is an integrated set of technical, methodological and procedural tools to
1 “Cultures, languages and politic of communication” PhD, Millennium Project Italian Node Association,
maradb@email.it.
2 Opinion convergence means a “structured communication” process which conveys various qualified opinions on
the discussed issue toward as shared as possible conclusions (Pacinelli, 2004) and it can be favoured by structuring
the problem, giving for instance statistically defined convergence intervals, and by structuring the contact, applying
for instance the participants’ isolation (Pacinelli, 2008).
3 “Centro Nazionale per l’Informatica nella Pubblica Amministrazione”, that is National Centre for Informatics into
Public Administration, now called Digit@PA.
4 National Scale Public Announcement to submit digital citizenship project, published on 13 April, 2004 on n. 86
Italian Official Journal.
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actively involve citizens in participated decisional processes. Like other projects submitted to the
co-financing, Partecipa.net chose to implement technologies which are not only technically
consolidated but also well known to public bodies and citizens, thus allowing them to focus on
content contributions rather than on technical training and to meantime minimize technologies
impact.
The tools chosen by Partecipa.net are summarized in the following (Table 1.).
Table 1. Partecipa.net kit tools5
Participation technologies
Partecipa.net kit tools
Type of participation
technologies
Information technologies
Personalized information
Thematic newsletter
Dialogue technologies
Personal consultancy
Forum and library
Questions into private mailbox
with public answers
Dialogue forum between
citizens and Local Public
Administrations
Consultancy technologies
Surveys
On-line vote solutions by using
login
The kit participative architecture describes the tools (personalized information, surveys,
consultancies, library, and forum) related to what the Region defines as the three levels of a
participatory process. The technical architecture links instruments to services and is formed by
the following modules:
- Partecipa.base, to register to the newsletter and to manage user profiling
- Partecipa.poll, to take part in surveys
- Partecipa.ask, to manage personalized consultancies
- Partecipa.forum, to manage forum moderation and management
- Partecipa.biblio, to manage the shared library
- Partecipa.doc, which puts at the forum moderator’s disposal a virtual and shared board to
write notes and resume discussions
- Answer Tree module, which archives and classifies questions made by the participants
and answers given by the editorial office into a FAQ tree.
The organizational architecture finally proposes organizational modifications to the public body
back office, in order to facilitate a correct kit tools use.
The Municipality of Modena “Per Via Gallucci. Vivere IN Centro, Vivere IL centro”6 project
5 From Regione Emilia-Romagna, 2004.
6 “For Gallucci Street. Living IN the Centre, Living THE Centre”. The author of this paragraph took part in the Web
site staff technical meetings, managed the Web site content, took part to every project phase (mapping, Open Space
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 31
used some of the kit tools because of being a partner of the Emilia-Romagna Region
Partecipa.net aggregation. The project is described as a parallel off- and on-line participation
path aiming to analyze cohabitation problems in the Modena city historic centre. It asked the
stakeholders to define a set of policies reducing the conflict by constituting a civic cohabitation
agreement, establishing shared rules and defining a joint effort to comply with them.
Such project is a good methodology combination example because it diachronically puts
interviews, Open Space Technology (OST, 1997-2008)7, on-line Public Delphi and thematic
discussion tables in practice within a same project.
The project started at the beginning of 2008 and defined short- and long-term project policies by
subdividing them into the following macro-phases (see table 2. for details):
- Explorative phase: stakeholders listening and mapping, first desirable actions proposition
- Evaluation phase: technically and politically feasible desirable policies evaluations
- Executive phase: technically and politically feasible desirable policies short and long
term execution.
Technology, items evaluations) and managed the on-line Public Delphi application described below.
7 As explained later on in this paragraph notes, the Open Space Technology is a large group participatory method,
having plenary and sub-groups sessions about a specific theme which is divided into sub-themes. Participants are
self-selected and take part in the working sessions basing on the following rules: “Whoever comes are the right
people”, “Whatever happens is the only thing that could have”, “When it starts is the right time”, “When it is over it
is over”. Everything is under participants’ management, defining the agenda by standing up and saying which is the
aspect of the thematic they want to talk about and becoming by tacit agreement that sub-group “facilitator”. One of
the rules governing the method when the plenary sessions ends and the sub-groups sessions start is “the law of two
feet (two footprints graphic)”, on the basis of which participants can easily go from a session to one another and join
other sessions whenever and for how long they want in a totally free atmosphere. The first article where the Open
Space Technology appeared is Owen, H. (1991), “Riding the Tiger: Doing Business in a Transforming World”,
Abbott Publishing, Potomac, Maryland, USA, but the author prefers to attribute the method to Owen (1997-2008).
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Table 2. “Per Via Gallucci” project activities
Explorative
Phase
Context research and mapping activity by preliminary meetings and by
(video) interviews with youths.
The preliminary meetings involved politicians and technicians to solve the
ongoing conflict, thus instituting a round table formed by the Modena city
District 1 components and by some of the Municipality of Modena services
responsible staff. The other two political tables were activated for a better
definition of the problem, one composed of politicians and city centre
residents and the other one of politicians and local premises managers.
Those tables gave in return a general and shared project objective, which
was redefining the area territorial identity by regenerating the relationships
among inhabitants and users. The second part of this phase allowed the
collection of information from various speakers/stakeholders (youth,
inhabitants, local managers), to motivate the Gallucci street users to express
their point of view about the problem and to verify their willingness to a
direct/indirect participation in the project. Both of them allowed the
individuation of first conflict resolution strategies.
Structured public confrontation among public administrators, inhabitants,
users, and local managers by applying an Open Space Technology.
It aimed to define an open discussion space where the stakeholders could
self-define, also thanks to the confrontation with politicians and technicians,
needs and aspirations of utmost importance and policies to satisfy them. The
OST proposals were grouped into four thematic areas: “Liveability and
Controls”, “Economical Activities”, “Environmental Decline and Acoustic
Pollution Prevention”, “Sensitization”.
Evaluation Phase
On-line structured evaluation processes (Public Delphi).
Because of the delicacy of the Liveability and Controls area, an on-line
Public Delphi application was developed to evaluate this sub-area OST items
in terms of desirability, merging the results to the following round tables.
Off-line thematic working tables (focus groups).
These three working tables, diachronically developed during three weeks of
May, were composed by various stakeholders representatives but also open
to the public. They allowed the OST items technical and political feasibility
evaluation in order to structure the previous phases’ outputs, and thus
planning together concrete activities.
Executive Phase
Shared working plan and operative policies execution.
After the participatory proposals illustration, made by the participants and
some Municipality of Modena politicians and technicians along the Gallucci
street premises, the proposals execution phase started. Some of the final
working plan feasible actions8 were executed soon after the end of the
project, while some others did or will from the end of 2008 and during 2009.
8 One of the already executed policies is the information and awareness campaign, through which posters, brochures
and other gadgets (for instance, coasters and so on) were distributed on Gallucci street from summer 2008, and the
“Street Stewart” introduction, who were preferred if compared to a stronger police forces control (anyway, more
control was given to adjacent areas to prevent drink-driving, dealing, and micro-criminality).
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An information campaign was combined with the project phases: it aimed to inform inhabitants,
local managers and premises users about the project objectives and methodology by various
channels, as for instance brochure, video-spot, ordinary mails to inhabitants and project Web
site, concluding the campaign with the policies’ final illustration in Gallucci street.
2. The on-line Public Delphi
The Public Delphi (PD) application carried out for the Municipality of Modena can be
considered as an original on-line Delphi experiment demonstrating an innovative modality in
applying the method by Web technologies. This application idiosyncrasy is the use of a
desirability scale, usually applied for Policy Delphi (Turoff, 1970). Such a scale allows citizens
participation in the items’ evaluation by defining a desirable set of actions and policies and such
policies can then be evaluated by politicians and technicians in terms of feasibility. Opinion
convergence, even if wished, was not a priority in the “Per Via Gallucci” experiment because the
on-line Public Delphi application aimed to integrate the “Liveability and Controls” thematic area
desirability evaluations in order to stimulate a confrontation about a reality experienced by the
local population. The feedback included a selection of favourable and unfavourable forum group
comments.
The on-line Public Delphi phases are summarized in the following (Table 3).
Table 3. “Per Via Gallucci” on-line Public Delphi phases
Phase
Activity
Moderator
Kit tool
Explorative
Forum 1 opening
Informative mail
sending
Items definition
Project information
Newsletter
Forum
First PD iteration
(Analysis)
QS1 sending
Forum 1 closing and
Forum 2 opening
Daily statistical group
Answer publication
Moderation
Argumentations and
counter-argumentations
Newsletter
Surveys
Forum
Second PD iteration
(Analysis)
QS1 closing
QS2 sending
Daily statistical group
answer publication
Moderation
Argumentations and
counter-argumentations
Newsletter
Surveys
Forum
Publication and
dissemination
Forum 2 closing and
Forum 3 opening
PD results publication
Newsletter
Forum
The table shows that the usual third Delphi iteration, where the group argues about the statistical
answer gaps, is missing and also a possible fourth Delphi iteration, where discussing other
argumentations and counter-argumentations, is. Some justifications are the following:
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
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- The forum allows a more in-depth examination: discussing favourable and unfavourable
argumentations in a forum enlarges the possibility of deepening the thematic, by
meantime reducing the time needed to send classic Delphi argumentations and counter-
argumentations; such a procedure gets close to the Real Time Delphi one, even without
having its technical characteristics (as, for instance, personalized and continuous access
to the web-space); moreover, the forum module can subdivide each forum into sub-
forums, allowing a more focused and clear discussion.
- Sending more than two questionnaires to the participants is problematic: this is due both
to the well known participants drop-out rate during the procedure and to the participants
change between one iteration and one another.
- Short time to fill out the questionnaires: the proposals on-line evaluation process risked
not being quite parallel to the off-line thematic working tables management; running
more than two iterations would have prolonged the Delphi procedure closing and
minimized the forum discussion because participants would have had less time to fill
each questionnaire and to discuss the evaluations.
The kit Delphi application integrates the forum with the opinion survey tools, starting from the
registration into the municipality data base by using the Partecipa.base module for user login.
When users are registered, they can choose the newsletter they want to receive into their
mailbox, so defining their profile. The module allows users, newsletters and statistical system
management.
The Partecipa.poll module allows the surveys management, also in a Delphi procedure, by
using reliable tools to register consultative votes and on-line vote tools to bind a unique vote to
the registration mechanism. Surveys are activated by the participatory process managers defining
a length of time and the results’ use at each application. The survey management is done on the
basis of the various communities of interest defined by the Partecipa.base registration but users
must give consent in order to receive questionnaires. The potential participant samples selection
is made by gender, age groups, residence and newsletter. Surveys can be singularly done on a
specific thematic, as part of wider research projects also using traditional tools, or integrated into
an iterative Delphi procedure using the forum tool. The questions can be open, that is without
influencing the answers, give some solutions, thus allowing a choice, or structured, that is
deriving from selected previous answers on the basis of certain research objectives.
The “Per Via Gallucci” on-line Public Delphi questionnaire evaluation scale was the desirability
scale, which allowed the proposals evaluation as follows:
- Very desirable: all consequences are positive and benefits are higher than costs
- Desirable: some secondary effects are negative and all main consequences are
positive
- Undesirable: some secondary effects are negative and benefits are lower than costs; it
is justifiable only if it is a condition of another very desirable policy
- Very undesirable: it has many negative consequences and benefits are lower than
costs.
Even if, as indicated, the desirability scale is usually applied in the Policy Delphi, the “Per Via
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Gallucci” experiment is a Public Delphi because a panel contained no experts or representatives;
instead citizens participation was applied (even if they were invited to join the procedure).
Unlike the other Delphi-like methods, the Public Delphi respondents cannot be considered as a
panel. A panel is a statistical sample based on a list of criteria, which could be of experts,
citizens and so on. The members of the panel are invited to provide their judgments to several
rounds of questionnaires. The text of each round is based on the results of the previous
questionnaire. The panellists can change their positions in the next round of the questionnaire
based on other panellists’ responses to questions in the previous round. After several rounds the
panel tends toward convergence in their answers. The people who respond to a Public Delphi
questionnaire are not an invited statistical sample. Instead, they are usually self-selected,
responding to public invitations via print journal, radio, and/or television programs. This self-
selected group’s composition can change during the iterations of questionnaires because it is
difficult for public participants to continue with several rounds. Convergence may be less
important than stimulating public opinion. Web tools exist to help the whole process.
The Partecipa.net module is a first attempt to also “group” citizen by interests. The “Per Via
Gallucci” invitation sending was still too generic to define a list. In fact, participants could self-
select themselves on the basis of the invitation mail received in their e-mail box because the
previous registration to the “Bilancio Partecipativo”9 mailing list and such ML is not specifically
formed by all possible territorial citizens. The reason why the invitation to take part to the
procedure was sent to all the “Bilancio Partecipativo” users is that selecting the participants also
on the basis of their domicile in Modena was not possible for the system and the gender, age and
residence criteria did not characterize all the stakeholders. Moreover, the Municipality also
considered the mailing list users participation during previous participatory experimentations.
Anyway, the Partecipa.base module could help to reach the stakeholders if the selecting criteria
are improved. Starting from a local level could also help the innovation. Anyway, when talking
about citizens their wishes and privacy criteria must be respected; therefore they must give
consent to be in the list for a survey purpose, even if public. Partecipa.net “Bilancio
Partecipativo” mailing list users in fact gave consent to receive surveys in order to be invited to
fill the questionnaire10 and thus must be stimulated by participation training.
Other considerations can be made about the survey tool also evaluating the forum tools.
Because they are not integrated but used separately, it is necessary to connect the survey
temporal process to the forum one in order to effectively apply an iterative Delphi procedure.
Forum 2 was therefore open when the first round questionnaire was sent and closed together
with the second round closing, also having intermediated forum moderation steps between the
9 Translation: "Participatory Budgeting." In this case people on a mailing list in the Municipality of Modena are
informed of Public Budget decisions. Their feedback on items’ financial allocations are used in the final decisions.
Various Participatory Budgeting applications have been developed since the first experimentation in Rio. Their
results and purposes can vary.
10 This necessity obliged the OST participants, eventually interested in a survey related to the project and who gave
their contacts to take part to the Delphi procedure, to register to the data base and to the specific newsletter and this
could have inhibited the participation in the PD of those who didn’t want to register. Moreover, the “Bilancio
Partecipativo” users are surely more than the “Per Via Gallucci” project stakeholders, since it referred to the whole
Municipality territory.
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first iteration and the second one in order to adapt the survey timing to the forum one.
The survey, which is not personalized, allows users to visualize the statistical group answer and
each item’s answers only after each iteration is closed. The survey administrators are the only
ones having access to its progress. In order to stimulate argumentations and counter-
argumentations, the moderator decided to give the statistical and item answers to the forum
daily.
The kit survey tool considers each evaluation round as unique and therefore a new survey must
be defined for each round in order to apply a real Delphi iterative procedure. This involves the
definition of a new respondent group at each iteration and the second questionnaire sending
again to all the mailing list users, included the ones who did not take part to the first round.
Moreover, the survey respondents are not related to the forum participants, who can join it
without taking part to the survey. This involves a differentiation between forum and survey
participants. It is not necessarily a negative characteristic, because it improves the debates and
gives alternatives points of view, but the number of survey respondents can not be increased
because no intermediate survey invitation mails can be sent while the survey is ongoing,
therefore forum participants can not join the procedure if the first round is not closed11.
Before sending the “Per Via Gallucci” survey invitation, a mail was sent to the “Bilancio
Partecipativo” mailing list in order to inform the users about the forthcoming survey. When the
invitation is sent, the Partecipa.poll module inserts there a description about the survey made by
the staff and a link to start it. This e-mail already contains user name and password. The module
also allows sending reminders during the process: the staff sent one for each iteration and
reminders were also published by forum posts and by the news Web site section. Other mails
containing technical and next project steps information were sent at each round’s conclusion.
Informative and technical support was also given by the Web site, a project e-mail and video-
tutorials made by the Municipality. The survey results are automatically collected by the module
and the second round questionnaire contained the statistical group answer for each item.
As regard the Partecipa.forum module, it subdivides the process into three unchangeable phases:
brainstorming, in-depth examination and conclusion12. The on-line forum contained training to
use the forum and information about the project phases during the explorative phase 1. It turned
into an in-depth OST “Liveability and Controls” proposals evaluation space when Forum 2 was
open, collecting first and second Public Delphi rounds arguments and counter-arguments. When
the Delphi process closed, Forum 2 was not accessible anymore and Forum 3 was open to
publish and disseminate the results.
Forum can be free, ex-ante or ex-post moderated. Users in free forums connect to the Web site,
make the registration and write the post which is automatically published and visible to the other
users, whose modality has a big impact on participation thanks to the immediate message
visibility but does not allow any contents control. Ex-ante moderated forums publish the
11 This problem was temporarily solved during the first iteration by signing into the forum and project Web site to
register to the “Bilancio Partecipativo” newsletter in order to receive the second round questionnaire.
12 The author suggested to the Emilia-Romagna Region to make the forum phases more flexible by allowing
phases’ elimination, for instance phase 1 when the explorative analysis is made by applying other, also off-line,
methods (see this project Open Space Technology).
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message only after the moderator approval, thus having a potential lower impact on participation
but giving more content control in exchange. The ex-post moderated forum is an intermediate
possibility because it allows an immediate message visibility and also a content moderation after
the publishing but thus involving potential participatory problems in exchange if the message is
read by someone before it is erased and/or if the sender is annoyed by the post erasing. During
the “Per Via Gallucci” project, an ex-ante moderation was applied because of the high potential
conflict related to the topic.
This on-line Public Delphi process can be differentiated from a classic Delphi also by the
moderator actions. In classic Delphis, the moderator sends the statistical group answer to the
panel at the second iteration by personalized questionnaires and sends the argumentations and
counter-argumentations at the next iterations. In the on-line Public Delphi process, the statistical
group answer is contained in the second general questionnaire while arguments and counter-
arguments are directly made by the participants into the forum. The moderator can still act as a
communicative filter but only when the forum is ex-ante moderated and focusing on interaction
rules more than on method rules. On-line forum moderators can be in fact defined as Social
Host, Project Manager, Community of Practice Facilitator, Cybrarian, Referee and Janitor 13
and get therefore closer to direct contact methodologies facilitators. The relational characteristics
the Web has bring the community manager or the on-line moderator to an intermediate point
between the face-to-face communication facilitator, applying structured communication
techniques (direct contact methods), and the communication in isolation moderator, applying
structured communication methods rules (mediated contact methods). The on-line Delphi
moderator must in fact facilitate the communication not only applying the high structuring
method rules but also facilitation techniques to structure the forum verbal communication,
helping to focus and avoiding interaction biases14. Some kit modules, as for instance the
Partecipa.doc one, help to collect posts’ contents. Daily giving the statistical answer and dividing
when useful the forum into sub-thematic forums could also help to continuously focus the
attention on items’ evaluations and to stimulate the interaction during the rounds.
The on-line Public Delphi on “Liveability and Controls” results gave two very desirable
scenarios out of four desirable ones and out of nine total ones, on the basis of the answers given
to the two surveys and of the influence the forum argumentations and counter-argumentations
had on evaluations. Such scenarios correspond to the events which were evaluated with the
maximum possible score given by the desirability scale and this output was published on website
and forum 3 and became an input to the off-line thematic working tables.
13 Coleman, Gøtze, 2001, to whom referring for an in-depth study.
14 The interaction biases are considered as distortions intervening into group communication and can be
distinguished as: individuals’ biases, that is subjects interacting in the group (experts, dominant talkers, shy and
thoughtful participants, ramblers and free riders, Krueger 1994-2000), group biases, descending from the different
“group entity” nature (subgroups creation, the groupthink – Janis, 1982, the leadership effect, the negative answers
fear and more psychological biases as the social loafing and the information overload), and psychological biases,
producing blocks in individual thoughts during the interaction (attenuation, concentration, attention and
comprehension blocks). An analysis of possible virtual communities biases highlights others deriving from the group
subjects’ status (for instance, newbies, oldbies and guests) or from the community subjects specific actions (as
lurkers, reading without participating, frequent posters or dominators, flamers, sowing discord, spammers, posting
non concerning posts, needlers, teasing on non determinant aspects of the topic, linkers, taking part to various
communities and sharing such knowledge, defenders and so on).
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3. Defining a Pubic Participatory Delphi
The “Per Via Gallucci” experience allowed the Municipality of Modena to use both kit
surveys and forums by applying a real iterative and interconnected process. The desirability scale
made the Partecipa.net coordinator also comprehend how to redefine future participatory
projects, for instance by applying a Policy Delphi to get desirable and feasible scenarios and by
evaluating a more accurate experts, politicians and citizens participatory groups insertion into the
decisional processes15.
Building different scenarios by applying an integrated participatory flow 16 also allows
redefining the Delphi process as a Participatory Delphi: the three types of participation it can
manage, namely direct, technical and mediated participation (Pacinelli, 2008) later on indicated,
can be integrated into policies evaluation flows.
Delphi-like methodology is usually applied for experts evaluations (think, for instance, of a
future event happening probability or to its technical feasibility or, moreover, of one or more
events impact forecasting), for representatives evaluations (think about an event political
feasibility) and for citizens (applying a specific Public Delphi). Such evaluations are usually
separately made for each specific topic, given different research objectives and groups’ expertise
and interests. The “Per Via Gallucci” project showed a diachronic integration among the applied
methods giving results to define the policies decisions. The hypothesis that various Delphi-like
characteristics and scales can be combined into a single and also synchronous process can be
formed.
Some off- and on-line experiments trying to integrate different types of participation into a
whole Delphi have already been made, as for the Integrated Delphi (Pacinelli, Trivisonno, 1998)
or the Iperdelphi (Bolognini, 2001).
The Integrated Delphi introduces a panel change by using two different evaluation groups, one
usually formed by technicians and/or politicians and the other one by stakeholder citizens... The
output given by a panel becomes an input to the other and they are integrated in a single process,
therefore the method denomination. During the first round, panel 1 evaluates the questionnaire
items. The interquartile range is then given to panel 2 participants, starting their first round by
giving evaluations on the basis of panel 1’s statistical group answer. Panel 2 participants can also
give arguments for their external evaluations. Their statistical answer and arguments are then
given to Panel 1, starting its second round. Panel 1 participants can argue any external to Panel 2
range or counter-argue Panel 2 arguments, then submitting the results to Panel 2 again. The
procedure is usually composed of three rounds and can be very useful when there are many
social stakeholders involved17.
15 The on-line Public Delphi moderation activity has been in fact disseminated among the Partipacipa.net
aggregation partners by asking the moderator to define a learning object about the experiment and about the Policy
Delphi characteristics and such LO is accessible by the partners through the coordinator e-learning platform.
16 The author wishes to acknowledge helpful comments given by Angelo Menna to more clearly illustrate the
process as a flow.
17 An example is given by the quoted experiment, which was made for industrial district training evaluation needs.
Panel 1 was in fact composed of regional industrial district actors and directed towards their desiderata definition,
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 39
The Iperdelphi experiment has a many-levels communication structure where various
stakeholders can be placed side by side. It has two main panels: one is called “policy
community” and is composed of thematic decision makers and community representatives, and
the other one is an external control group called “virtual community”, which is composed of
lobbies and single citizens. The controlled feedback iterative structure is on-line thanks to Web
tools, while the number of participating subjects, particularly in the virtual community, can
really increase. The virtual community can join the discussion at any moment giving arguments
and counter-arguments to the first panel evaluations and discussion, so participating to the
argumentative phase, but has not the right to vote on the items, which is a “policy community”
prerogative. This sharing goes on until the end of the Policy Community Delphi rounds, when
the moderator can ask both the groups for a conclusive evaluation. Virtual community
participants’ self-selection is similar to the Public Delphi one and it supports any stakeholder
confrontation with decision makers. When Web tools and groupware support the communication
management, the application gets close to the Real Time Delphi ones, allowing a roundless
procedure.
Public decisions usually concern citizens’ future and participation, therefore policy definition
must be investigated also thinking about the decisions to be taken to plan that future, whether
long- or short-term. The Participated Social Planning (Pacinelli, 2004) allows the definition of a
project scenario18, trying to plan some of the desired futures (normative scenarios 19) among the
possible futures (exploratory scenarios20) and thus individuating the policies which could make
the events conducing to the desiderata21 happen when they are implemented.
Participation must be differentiated based on subjects, obtaining a direct or indirect participation
if related to citizens (Pacinelli, 2008). The first one is referred to citizens’ participation in the
public decision-making and can be defined by using a participation ladder varying from
nonparticipation (“therapy” and “manipulation”) and tokenism (“information”, “consultation”
and “placation”), which are kinds of passive participation, up to active participation
(“partnership”, “delegated power” and “citizen control”), in which citizens have equal weight in
the policies’ decision-makers deliberative arena (Arnstein, 1969).
Citizen non direct participation is mediated by other subjects, as privileged witnesses or
informers (Fabbris, 1990). They can be distinguished, on the basis of the informational content
they give, into anthropologic and/or cultural witnesses, community representatives and/or
informers and advisor and/or forecasting experts. Technical participation is determined by
advising and/or forecasting experts while mediated participation is determined by anthropologic
and/or cultural witnesses and by community representatives and/or informers, among which the
political/administrative and the stakeholders delegations can be inserted.
Many so called citizens’ participatory actions do not go beyond passive participation, among
while panel 2 was composed of regional administration internal and external experts to connect previous desiderata
to the strategy to be defined in order to reach them and thus evaluating their feasibility.
18 A project scenario is the strategic planning object and derives from the Participated Social Planning (PSP)
procedure.
19 That is citizens’ needs and desiderata.
20 That is all the possible images of the future which are plausible with a given present.
21 Plural of desideratum, Latin for something considered necessary or highly desirable.
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 40
which consultation can be inserted. Locally or not delimited citizenship can anyway receive
some “powers” back by having not only the possibility of being consulted in single surveys but
also of discussing their opinions with politicians and technicians and even evaluating the items.
Various evaluation scales can be used for different panels and every evaluation can be integrated
into a single Delphi process. In this way, a decision can be taken by considering desirable
scenarios among all probable explorative ones, thus helping the definition of a feasible project
scenario.
Such scenarios would be defined by a single procedure which helps policy decision thanks to the
participation of various panels’ evaluations influencing each other. These panels can use the
same scale, for instance the perceived importance, and/or different scales, on the basis of their
expertise and role: citizens would give their policy desirability evaluation, politicians would give
their political feasibility evaluation and experts would give forecasts on the occurrence of future
developments, desirability of some future state, means for achieving or avoiding a future state
(Gordon, 2003a) and one or more events’ impact forecasting. Every group would then have the
policy right of vote. Moreover, various participant groups could, by seeing other groups
statistical answers, real time evaluate other groups answers by simply saying if they like them or
not (making a statistical answer or item popularity rating). They could also argue about their
ranking and/or counter-argue other groups’ evaluations.
The process to evaluate a single policy by this Participatory Delphi is illustrated in Figure 10.
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 41
Figure 10. Participatory Delphi
n times
Citizens
Experts
Representatives
Evaluations
- …
- …
- …
- …
Statistical
answer
Statistical
answer
Statistical
answer
Statistical
answer
Statistical
answer
Statistical
answer
Argumentations
and counter-
argumentations
Evaluations
- …
- …
- …
- …
Argumentations
and counter-
argumentations
Argumentations
and counter-
argumentations
POLICY DECISION
Delphi
closing
Evaluations,
Argumentations
and counter-
argumentations
Evaluations,
Argumentations
and counter-
argumentations
Evaluations,
Argumentations
and counter-
argumentations
Evaluations
- …
- …
- …
- …
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 42
The previous process can be used to illustrate any policy participatory social planning applying
an integrated methodology to identify the project scenario and its related short- and long-term
actions. Defining all possible exploratory scenarios, the normative scenarios and the feasible
policies together with their impacts, and consideration of all the stakeholders evaluations, are
made into a policy plan.
A policy social participatory planning starts in fact by applying methods for phenomena and
system simplified representation, allowing the passage from the ideal phenomenon to its
simplified image by applying the pertinence tree and its derived morphological analysis, and
from the ideal system to its simplified image by applying structural analysis (Godet, 1994). This
should be the exploratory phase in which, anyway, citizens and politicians could argue and
counter-argue about experts’ evaluations but without having the right to vote.
Social participatory planning goes on collecting the data to build the indicators representing the
defined phenomenon, applying methods to collect or evaluate needs and desiderata (aggregated
data, single and group opinions). This is where the synchronous analysis phase shown in
Figure 10 really starts applying the Participatory Delphi procedure. Methods for participated
impacts analysis22 also allow selected events’ impacts evaluations by using technical, and
sometimes mediated, participation. This procedure’s results define long-term objectives
(strategic planning phase) and select and activate the means to reach the strategic objectives
(tactical-operative planning phase).
Every evaluation has the same importance, what changes is their meaning. There are many
events which could happen in the future given a certain present, therefore futures research could
explore all possible scenarios by asking experts. Citizens could choose, also influenced by an
expert’s desirability ranking, the most desirable scenarios among all the exploratory ones, giving
the normative scenarios. Citizen normative scenarios are the ones the politicians should address,
since they are the depositories of citizens’ wishes. Not all the desirable scenarios are politically
and technically feasible, therefore this must be evaluated when defining the project scenario the
politicians will execute, also forecasting impacts one or more events could have on trends and on
other events.
Participation in social planning allows therefore the recourse to methods for participation,
involving citizens desiderata in the policies’ planning in order to improve the long-term policy
planning decision-making defined by the project scenario.
The structured communication concept helps participated social planning to choose methods for
groups’ participation to be applied, whether on- or off-line or with direct or mediated contact,
and to manage the interaction in policies’ evaluations. Structured communication is a set of rules
and techniques for opinion convergence into a whole of subjects interacting in group, in order to
generate a collective intelligence immune to interaction biases and to formalize intra- and inter-
groups communication ways on the basis of certain interaction management rules which are
22 Methods studying potential events impacts can be classified into the following three approaches (Pacinelli, 2008):
Event Impact, in which one or more events impacting on a specific system are studied, Trend Impact (Gordon,
2003b), in which one or more events impacting on one or more time series are analyzed, and Cross-impact, in which
impacts among various events are studied.
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 43
given by the method and applied by the moderator/facilitator. It allows the application of the
opinion convergence procedure on the basis of the interacting group and the improvement of the
definition of scenarios by managing group communication, structuring therefore the decision-
making arena. Direct and mediated contact methodologies can be diachronically applied into any
participatory project. Direct contact methodology is really important because of the single and
community empowerment and the non-verbal communication richness it allows but the
facilitator needs to take much care in structuring the communication to avoid interaction biases.
Mediated contact methodology (Delphi-like one), instead, already has a high communication
structuring level and the moderator just applies the method rules addressed to avoid the biases,
losing non-verbal communication among participants in exchange.
Web tools can be really useful to the participatory social planning and could surely empower
both the methodologies but mainly helps the policy evaluation process to improve and become
continuous. They allow the recourse to informative materials related to the topic, to shorten the
process length, to visualize the statistical groups’ answers during the process and to rank it at n
time, thus allowing argument and counter-argument sharing among the groups so that each panel
can influence other groups evaluations on the base of their expertise but with less probability that
biases occur because of the mediated contact. This is the Real Time Delphi procedure currently
applied by the Millennium Project. It could be modified to enlarge group participation basing on
the previous flow by giving, for instance, different profiling to experts, politicians and citizens.
Like the personal and professional characteristics can be matched to define an expert on the basis
of a topic (see the lock-and-key approach for instance), so citizens could be defined based on
city of birth, National, Province, Municipality and Districts past or present (or even future)
residences or domiciles, and the politicians on past, current or future representative charges. The
topic will doubtless help the selection defining the characteristics and also the self-rated
expertise could be very useful in weighing the evaluations. This means having a whole
population data base from which to do sampling for participatory social planning.
Such a possibility needs anyway more results representativeness than the one had into the “Via
Gallucci” project, so that evaluations can have more strength and really address decision makers.
Such registration should be promoted by the public bodies, starting from a local dimension and
training citizens focusing on the importance their participation has into the process.
Figure 10. describes not only a Participatory Delphi for single policy procedures but a more
generically policies participatory social planning flow, which could apply many participatory
methods also having recourse to citizens desiderata. It can integrate both on- and off-line experts
and representatives evaluations and opinions, on the basis of local, national or trans-national
disseminated subjects. The participated social planning theory contains therefore more than one
policy definition. When also the various policies evaluations processes get interconnected,
probably by a Web application, Figure 10. becomes a complete participatory social planning
frame which allows many different stakeholders group participation by applying an integrated
methodology. The project scenarios short- and long-term actions to be executed would then be
identified simultaneously considering every policy’s opportunities and threats.
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 44
Conclusions
The on-line Public Delphi made by using the Emilia-Romagna Region kit is a really intuitive
application on the whole. The survey, forum and mailing list tools are really easy to manage by
the participants, do not need groupware to run a Delphi and have many tutorials to help
registration, survey and forum activities. They are also technically intuitive to the moderators,
even if they need an in-depth Delphi-like methodology knowledge and appropriate moderation
and facilitations skills to structure the communication.
For participatory ends, subjects taking part to on-line Delphi-like application must have
appropriate technical skills and public bodies must support them improving their technical
expertise by various channels and means. The moderator must also define a communication
protocol to be put on-line or published on the website and forums, in order to explain the
methods rules to the participants and their structured communication. On the other hand, a Public
Delphi on-line transposition enriches the procedure by allowing stakeholders participation by
Web, besides by print journals or TV and radio programmes, and to re-use this formula process
for various politics and conflict situations, starting from a local level.
The local territory experiments described in this work are a good starting point for first
integrated off- and on-line structured participatory processes: they can influence the public
decision making by collecting citizens desiderata and aiming to integrate the whole decision
process into a structured and continue participatory social planning frame related to one long-
term policy (Public Participatory Delphi). Starting from the local territory would allow an easier
evaluations integration, also planning a future citizens, experts and politicians data bases
integration for national applications and a whole set of methodology to define a participatory
social planning. This appendix on-line Public Delphi procedure or a more on-line structured
process shown in paragraph 3. and applied for example by the roundless Real Time Delphis,
would address public decisions thanks to the scenarios evaluations given by the stakeholders and
could help starting an integrated policies planning.
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The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 45
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“Future Research Methodology – V2.0”, The Millennium Project.
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eds.), “Future Research Methodology – V2.0”, The Millennium Project.
9. Janis, I.L. (1982), “Groupthink”, Boston, Houghton Mifflin.
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edition, with Mary Anne Casey, Sage publishing, Thousand Oaks, CA.
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13. Pacinelli, A. (2004), “La Pianificazione Sociale Partecipata: approcci e metodi” (editor’s
note: The Social Participated Planning: approaches and methods), Libreria
dell’Università Editrice, Pescara.
14. Pacinelli, A. (2008), “Metodi per la ricerca sociale partecipata” (editor’s note: Methods
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15. Regione Emilia-Romagna (2004, ed.), “Partecipa.net. Documento di progetto” (editor’s
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The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 46
ENDNOTES
1. O'Grady, Adele. Background paper prepared for the Millennium Project Feasibility Study by
Louis Harris & Associates, Inc., 630 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10111, September 27, 1993.
Louis Harris & Associates is a leading public opinion research firm.
2. Bishop, Peter. Monograph of Studies of the Future, University of Houston-Clear Lake, Texas,
September 1993.
3. A Charrette Simulation, New England Program in Teacher Education, Durham, New
Hampshire, 1972.
4. Turoff, Murray. The Network Nation. This book is the classic work on computer-mediated
communication and its implications for the future of civilization.
5. Berger, Honorable Mr. Justice Thomas R. Resources, Development, and Human Values,
Impact Assessment Bulletin, Vol 2, No. 2, 129-147.
6 .Glenn, Jerome C. "Social Technologies of Freedom." Anticipatory Democracy, Random
House (Vintage Books), New York, 1978. Much of the material throughout this section has been
drawn with permission from the author.
7 There are a variety of variations to group processes that divide into group sessions and then
back to the whole to come to group decisions. One variation described below by Mara Di
Berardo is Open Space Technology (Owen, H. (1997-2008), “Open Space Technology: A User's
Guide”, Berrett-Koehler.). This is a method having plenary and subgroups sessions about a
specific thematic which is divided into sub-themes. The main difference between the other
methods and this one is that everything is under participants’ management: the facilitator asks
participants to define the agenda during the plenary sessions. Then the "facilitator" of the
subgroups focuses on that agenda. When the plenary session is closed, participants decide which
session to join. They can also change groups and can even make new other groups. At the end of
the day (it can last from one to three days), each group gives a report about their decisions,
considerations, etc. and a list of participants. When the plenary session begins again, participants
can discuss the process and issues. The facilitator and staff quickly record the results,
participants list, and add some pictures. This report is given to the participants before they leave.
In my opinion, it is really useful during an explorative phase of a research effort instead of
giving direction to decisions/actions. This could be done instead of or before one or more Focus
Groups. There is no limit to the number of people involved, apart from the location space. The
OST is well known by many active Municipalities in Italy, which are orientated toward
participatory methodologies. The have used OST for various purposes including budget
discussions. There is also an on-line version. See www.openspaceworld.org
8 For an example of the use of a Delphi survey to identify community development goals, see
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 47
Harold Becker and Paul de Brigard, "A Framework for Community Development Action
Planning," Institute for the Future, Report for the Connecticut Department of Community Affairs
(February 1971).
9 Joseph F. Coates et al. Discuss a variety of small group approaches to exploring the future in
Issues Management: How You Can Plan, Organize, and Manage For the Future, Lomond,
1986. See especially small group approaches discussed on pages 85-86.
10 Baburoglu, Oguz N. and Garr, Andy M., III. Chapter 6: Search Conference Methodology for
Practitioners, Discovering Common Ground, Berrett-Keohler Publishers, San Francisco, 1993.
11 From conversations of Warren Avis (the noted Rent-a-Car entrepreneur) with the author.
12 Harris, Louis and Taylor, Humphrey. Our Planet - Our Health: Attitudes to Environment,
World Health Forum, Vol. 11, 1990, pp. 32-37. This article details how the poll was done and
gives an analysis of the results.
13 Louis Harris & Associates. Imaging Democracy: A Report on a Series of Focus Groups in
Mozambique on Democracy and Voter Education. National Democratic Institute, Washington,
D.C., 1993.
14 Schuttler, Barry. Citizen Participation Ratification for Community Development, National
Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (1977).
15 Local Coordinator's Guide for SYNCON, The Committee for the Future, Washington, D.C.,
1975.
16 "Pre-SYNCON Information to Section Coordinators," SYNCON: Washington, DC., The
Committee for the Future, Washington, D.C., 1973 (page 6).
17 Most of the following description of the Future Search Conference has been drawn from Oguz
N. Gaburoglu and M. Andy Garr, III, Chapter 6: Search Conference Methodology for
Practitioners: An Introduction in Discovering Common Ground, Marvin R. Weisbord (ed),
Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, 1993.
18 Krol, Ed. The Whole Internet: User's Guide & Catalog, O'Rielly & Associates, Inc.,
Sebastopol, California, USA, 1992. This excellent overview of how the world is being
connected for computer- mediated communication.
19 The Consensor or PC Voter is available through The Futures Group, Glastonbery, CT, USA.
20 The following list was prepared by Peter Bishop, Chairman of the Program for the Study of
the Future at the University of Houston-Clear Lake, Texas, as a contribution to this booklet.
21 Bishop, Peter. An Introduction to Group Decision Support Systems, The Environmental
Professional Vol. 15, pp 156-158, 1993.
The Millennium Project Futures Research Methodology—V3.0
Participatory Methods 48
22 Additional sources on Groupware:
Johansen, R.F. Groupware: Computer Support for Business Teams. The Free Press. New
York, 1988.
For a example of a simulated groupware session, see "The Future of Meeting Support
Environments," by Peter Bishop in The Environmental Professional, Vol. 15, pp 219-230,
1993.
University of Minnesota's Unix-based conferencing system SAMM (Software-Aided
Meeting Management).
23 Schuttler, Barry.
24 American's Tough Choices: Citizen's Jury on Health Care Reform, October 10-14, 1993 Final
Report, Jefferson Center, Minneapolis, MN USA, December 1993.
