title: A consensus process for identifying a prioritised list of study questions.
abstract: A consensus process has been developed to assist the UK National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death in identifying questions to be addressed in its studies. The process utilises the knowledge and experience of a panel of experts via a facilitated brainstorming exercise and employs a robust voting system to produce a list of candidate questions ordered in terms of the preferences expressed by individual panel members. The process which is described has been used successfully to assist the design of two national studies and it is anticipated that the process will be adopted for many studies in the future.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Operational Research Unit, University College London, Gower Street, London WCIE 6BT, UK m.utley@ucl.ac.uk
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Utley
authors.forename: Steve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gallivan
authors.forename: Mary
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mills
authors.forename: Marisa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mason
authors.forename: Christobel
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Hargraves
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D032921:Consensus; D009026:Mortality; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D012107:Research Design; D013222:State Medicine; D006113:United Kingdom / Q000453:epidemiology