Deliberative Mapping: citizens and specialists informing decisions on science and technology

These five briefings explain the Deliberative Mapping (DM) approach, which is designed to help specialists and members of the public weigh up evidence to reach a joint decision on a complex policy issue where there is no obvious way forward. The methodology can be applied to a problem to judge how well different courses of action perform according to a set of economic, social, ethical and scientific criteria. The aim is to use this approach as the basis for more robust, democratic and accountable decision making which better reflects public values. DM integrates two independent but complementary approaches to informing decision making: stakeholder decision analysis (SDA) which is a qualitative group based process; and Multi-Criteria Mapping (MCM) which is a quantitative, computer-assisted interview process. The first briefing, Opportunities and challenges for involving citizens in decision making, gives a background and a rationale for the approach and looks at current developments in citizen participation in governance. The second briefing The Deliberative Mapping approach, describes the technique. Briefing three, Deliberative Mapping in practice: the kidney gap, illustrates the application of DM to a case-study analysing the problem of kidney shortages, and summarises how participants appraised the various options for the way forward. Briefing four, Citizens' panels in Deliberative Mapping: a user guide, describes how citizens' panels are used in DM. It focuses on how to run them, and the issues that facilitators and researchers need to address to ensure that the panels work well. Briefing five, Using the Multi-Criteria Mapping (MCM) Technique, describes Multi-Criteria Mapping (MCM), and considers its role in helping individuals identify and explain their preferred ways forward on complex and uncertain problems.