Community Safety Evaluation Lab (CSE-Lab)
The Community Safety Evaluation Lab (CSE-Lab) studies the nature, causes, and consequences of violence and its impact on public health. We address these issues through a multidisciplinary approach, focusing on youth violence and violent extremism to improve community safety.
677 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115
Toolkit for System-Level Evaluations Using Scenario-Based Techniques
What is the purpose of this toolkit?
This toolkit is designed to support organizations engaged in the development of programs to prevent acts of extremist, targeted, and/or mass violence. The technique and material included in the toolkit help such organizations in conducting brainstorming sessions with the purpose of achieving consensus on how to develop the programs.
What is a Nominal Group Technique (NGT)?
The NGT was developed in 1975 by Delbecq, al.* as a structured brainstorming and multi-stage consensus-building process to solicit feedback from a group of stakeholders on a given topic. The approach is intended as an evaluation method to provide semi-quantitative rank-ordered feedback from group participants.**
* Delbecq AL, Van de Ven AH, Gustafson DH. Group techniques for program planning: a guide to nominal group and Delphi processes. Scott Foresman Company. Glenview, Illinois; 1975.
- ** Piltch-Loeb, Rachael, et al. “Use of Scenario-Based Nominal Group Techniques to Evaluate System Functions: Examples from the USA & Sweden.” Proceedings, 2021, https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2021077005.
What is a Scenario-Based Nominal Group Technique (SB-NGT)?
The proposed scenario-based NGT is a new form of NGT created by our team to include a specific scenario around which the brainstorming sessions are conducted. The proposed format includes elements of tabletop exercises (scenario with a timeline and discussion phase) as well as elements of traditional NGTs (silent brainstorming and ranking).
What is included in the toolkit?
- Background information on the SB-NGT process.
- Instructions on how to execute the SB-NGT including logistical aspects, a description of the NGT process, and materials you need.
- Challenges and Functions note-taking sheets to print and distribute to the participants.
- Definition of terms used during the technique.
- Slides set and instructions on how to adapt the slides to the local context.
- Data analysis instructions and codebook