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"Citizens' juries and other forms of research into public attitudes are to be more tightly controlled amid growing concerns that they are a 'sham' listening exercise used for political purposes, rather than a genuine way of canvassing opinion. The Observer has learnt that the bill for citizens' juries is likely to reach more than £3m this year.” The Observer 30th September

We are always interested in different ways of exploring how to get people to contribute their views and have discussed the topic in past blogs and it would be sad to see this methodology discredited. The main questions are: does it work? When do you use this way of gathering opinion as opposed to the other choices? Does it offer value for money? Now with these big budgets being bandied about, we are trying to collect evidence on what represents best value in consultations - what does it cost to get people in the room, ready to talk about issues - local and national?

The figures that we have come up with are the rates for focus groups – see blog piece 'Pockets filled with gold or the empty hall'  – of £40 for two hour meeting. Then there was the big national exercise on 'Your health, Your Care, Your Say' - where the spending ran at around £1million or more but a rough cost per head came up with a range between £30 and £50 depending on different ways of working out how many people's opinions were fed into the mix. We have just sent in our formal response to this consultation and have again made the point that any definition of 'effective' as in 'Effective Consultations' must include value for money criteria.

Citizen juries – properly conducted – are expensive. The Observer article defined citizen juries as “panels of 20 or more people who can meet for one day or over several days - can call witnesses to hear evidence before deciding how they feel about policies. Some participants are paid nothing, while others get more than £100 a day.” Participant expenses are only one element in the mix.

Let's take a look at best practice.

The best pieces of work using the citizen jury technique I have ever seen was done by the Independent Television Commission now subsumed into OFCOM. A past chairman wrote about their work using citizen juries “The Independent Television Commission (ITC) is the first regulatory body which has chosen to use citizens' juries as a means of discovering whether its approach to regulation has kept pace with the opinions of the viewing public.” He added “Commissioning a citizens' jury is not risk free. The process is public. There is no requirement that the findings should support the commissioning body”. The report on that work was on “TELEVISION ON TRIAL - Citizens’ Juries on Taste and Decency.”

Citizens' Juries were again the chosen methodology to collect evidence around how the ITV companies should approach their public interest broadcasting responsibilities – a very important regulatory debate at the time where it was important to demonstrate the quality of the way the public view had been collected.

I quote from the first provisional report on what were to be three citizens' juries – not the findings but what is involved in setting up a genuine citizen jury approach entails. The work was done (as it would seem it always is) by Opinion Leader Research.

First set your objectives:-

OBJECTIVES

The key objectives of the Citizens’ Jury included:

• Assessing the levels of awareness and understanding of public service broadcasting
• Examining the current role of public service broadcasting including existing and potential overall requirements and specific requirements for:
• Regionality
• Minority programming
• Sub-titling
• Religious programming
• Children’s programming
• Defining the key elements for public service broadcasting in the future
• Evaluating and prioritising these key elements

Then set up the event:

METHODOLOGY

Selecting the Jury

• OLR recruited fourteen citizens from the Wrekin area as jurors
• Jurors were recruited using a stratified random sampling technique
• In order to match the demographic profile of the area as closely as possible
• 3000 people were selected at random from the Wrekin constituency electoral register and asked to indicate if they were interested in taking part in the Jury
• Of around 200 who replied, fourteen were chosen to represent a cross-section of the Wrekin population

The Jury included:

• Those who were employed, unemployed and retired
• Male and female participants
• A mix of different social classes
• A mix of different ages
• Half of the Jury had either cable or satellite television or both
• While the other half received only terrestrial television

Keep them secluded and working for a long time

The Jury ... met for one evening (23rd March) and four days (24th, 25th, 27th and 28th March) at the Telford Golf & Country Club.

Get evidence from lots of people:

witnesses from:

• Granada Television Ltd
• GMG ENDEMOL Entertainment Plc
• ITV Network Ltd
• Carlton Midlands
• Evangelical Alliance
• Channel 4
• MA TV Channel 6
• Carlton Broadcasting
• Independent cable and local television expert
• ISBA (Incorporated Society of British Advertisers)
• Children’s Society

and then write a decent report.

You can learn more about these exercises by looking at the ITC legacy archive on the OFCOM site.

There is no note of the budget but the costs would have been high – set up, room hire, transcription, participant payment etc.

So what are the answers to our questions – does it work? Yes it does and there are established methodologies for doing it right. Is it expensive – yes it is. Is it worth it? Yes if the stakes are high enough and you need to demonstrate your commitment to a means of research that may be risky (because it may not give the results you want) but is unchallengeable on its own terms – you may still need some bigger numbers to validate the views of a small group however representative the sample.

Get that budget proportionate to the importance of the issue for your organisation and make sure that someone is ready to listen and act on whatever your jury or juries tell you. Of course exercising this sort of listening option implies you have some time and space. Just bear in mind that events may overwhelm this leisurely discussion process.

Remember the queues of savers outside the Northern Rock branches determined to withdraw their savings? Citizen customer action (not talk) changed government policy in a week.

Have you used this approach? What was your experience? Did it give you results that made the expenditure worthwhile? Drop us a line and we will be happy to publish your views.

M-A-C supports organisations and individuals organising consultations and any exercise where user views are being sought and collected. We can write the document, set up websites and user surveys and facilitate small groups. We have access to printers and designers and help design and implement communication plans. We can advise and assist in the implementation of 'influencing' programmes for opinion leaders and other stakeholders. Visit http://www.mooreadamsoncraig.co.uk for more information.