Consensus decision-making or consensus politics is group decision-making processes in which participants develop and decide on proposals with the aim, or requirement, of acceptance by all. The focus on avoiding negative opinion differentiates consensus from unanimity, which requires all participants to positively support a decision.

 

Consensus measurement is the central part of a Delphi survey. To be able to measure group agreement, Surveylet calculates four consensus-related measures: consensus score, choice of consensus, group stability, stability threshold and consensus status.

 

Consensus Score

 

 Available Statistics to use to calculate consensus score:

 

- Majority

 

- Median: The middle number; found by ordering all data points and picking out the one in the middle (or if there are two middle numbers, taking the mean of those two numbers).

 

- Mode: The most frequent number - that is, the number that occurs the highest number of times.

 

- Mean: The "average" number; found by adding all data points and dividing by the number of data points.

 

- Range Consensus 2: your Likert scale  is divided by 2 ranges (e.g. Low/High) where labels can be customized using the RANGE LABEL question settings. Recommended for 4, 6, 8, 10, 12-point scales.

 

- Range Consensus 3: your Likert scale  is divided by 3 ranges (e.g. Low/Medium/High) where labels can be customized using the RANGE LABEL question settings. Recommended for 6, 9, 12-point scales. NOTE: The 70% value is set by the STABILITY THRESHOLD option therefore can be adjusted.

 

- Range Consensus 3:1570: your Likert scale  is divided by 3 ranges (e.g. Low/Medium/High) where labels can be customized using the RANGE LABEL question settings. Recommended for 6, 9, 12-point scales. CONSENSUS IN: 70% or more participants overall scoring as 7 to 9 AND < 15% participants scoring.

 

- Range Consensus 3:1570 7015: your Likert scale  is divided by 3 ranges (e.g. Low/Medium/High) where labels can be customized using the RANGE LABEL question settings. Recommended for 6, 9, 12-point scales. CONSENSUS IN: 70% or more participants overall scoring as 7 to 9 AND < 15% participants scoring as 1 to 3. CONSENSUS OUT: < 15% participants overall scoring as 7 to 9 AND 70% or more participants scoring as 1 to 3.  NOTE: The 70% value is set by the STABILITY THRESHOLD option therefore can be adjusted.

 

- Range Consensus 3:1570|50: your Likert scale  is divided by 3 ranges (e.g. Low/Medium/High) where labels can be customized using the RANGE LABEL question settings. NOTE: The 70% value is set by the STABILITY THRESHOLD option therefore can be adjusted. Recommended for 6, 9, 12-point scales. CONSENSUS IN: 70% or more participants overall scoring as 7 to 9 AND < 15% participants scoring as 1 to 3.  CONSENSUS OUT: 50% or fewer participants scoring as 7 to 9.  NOTE: The 70% value is set by the STABILITY THRESHOLD option therefore can be adjusted.

 

- Range Consensus 4: your Likert scale  is divided by 4 ranges (e.g. Very Low/Low/High/Very High) where labels can be customized using the RANGE LABEL question settings. Recommended for 4, 8, 12-point scales.

 

- Range Consensus 5: your Likert scale  is divided by 5 ranges (e.g. Very Low/Low/Neutral/High/Very High) where labels can be customized using the RANGE LABEL question settings. Recommended for 5, 10-point scales.

 

- Custom Consensus: you may import your custom consensus, if currently available consensus list does not provide you with the measurement your project require. This is an optional service. Requires Enterprise license.

 

When Range Consensus is used, the choices of consensus will be the range with that received the most votes. If given range has received the percentage of votes specified by your Stability Threshold, consensus is established.

 

Example for 3-range consensus with 70% of stability:

If over 70% of people voted for choice 1, 2 or 3, then Range 1 (Low) will be the consensus. If over 70% of people voted for choice 4, 5 or 6, then Range 2 (Medium) will be the consensus. If over 70% of people voted for either choice 7, 8 or 9, then Range 3 (High) will be the consensus. You can speficy Range Labels in your Question or Matrix Column property settings.

 

Summary of when to use the mean, median and mode Please use the following summary table to know what the best measure of central tendency is with respect to the different types of variable.

 

Choice of Consensus

 

For multi-selection questions, the choice of Consensus is calculated and its value is coming from the Consensus Score.  The nearest whole number to the consensus score will be the choice of consensus. E.g. if consensus score is 4.69, the choice of consensus will be the choice that is ranked at position #5 starting with the 1st choice at Rank #1. if consensus score is 3.13, the choice of consensus will be the choice that is ranked at position #3 starting with the 1st choice at Rank #1.

 

 The group stability indicates the strength of consensus, or level of consensus. Basically, how strong the agreement on the choice of consensus between all respondents. Available Statistics to use to calculate Group Stability:

- Coefficient of Variation (recommended for rating scale questions): it measures the deviation from the mean; the closer the responses to the mean, the stronger the group stability. The farther responses are from the mean, the weaker group stability is.

- Percentage (recommended for categorical questions - also known as qualitative questions or attribute questions): the group stability will be the percentage of people that selected the choice of consensus.

 

0-100%. If there is single polar consensus, the stability threshold must be met for consensus to be achieved. Stability threshold value can be anywhere between 0 and 100%, with 100% meaning unanimous agreement.

 

Consensus status value can be Disagreement or Agreement (Dissent/Consent). The Consent status requires that a Choice of Consensus is established with a Group Stability that is greater than the Stability Threshold.