5. Improving the Reliability of Judgements

Judgements underpin all aspects of decision making, whether assessing the nature of the problem, interpreting evidence, or deciding upon the risks and benefits of different actions. Serious problems arise with conventional means of deriving judgements to inform decisions, such as confusing values and facts, listening to a single expert, or deploying processes prone to individual and group biases such as forced consensus. Thankfully there are methods that reduce the impact of such biases including processes such as the Delphi Technique and the IDEA protocol. This chapter outlines these methods to aid in eliciting better judgements in decision making.