Definitions are social constructions rather than objective descriptions. They set clear boundaries for what is considered normal in a situation. Common words in organizations, like effectiveness or success, carry different meaningss in different contexts. In this paper, we evaluate the Delphi Technique as a method for explicating context-specific definitions and illustrate its use in formulating a context-specific definition of ‘an effective health care team’. Eight multi-disciplinary organization members participated in the study and reached consensus on characteristics assigned to team effectiveness in three rounds. The final definition implies the influence of organizational values, underscoring the importance of context specificity in organization studies.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the influence of participants' characteristics on the results produced by formal consensus methods.

Methods: The approach was an experimental study of 346 participants in 20 groups rating the appropriateness of four mental health interventions for the treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic back pain. There were four factors in the design: systematic literature review provided or not, decisions made under realistic or “ideal” resource assumptions, clinically mixed (general practitioners and mental health professionals) or homogenous group (general practitioners only), convened or mail-only group. A group's rating was defined as the median of participants' ratings. The influence of participants' characteristics (age, sex, and specialty) was examined using multilevel models.

Results: The largest differences were between the GPs and mental health professionals, both in their initial ratings of the different interventions, and in how much they altered their ratings between rounds. There were smaller but statistically significant (p<.05) differences between specialty and age groups in initial ratings for the treatment (by whatever means) of different conditions, and for certain conditions women increased their ratings more than men. Women rated intervention more favorably when assuming “ideal” rather than realistic levels of resources, but men did not.

Conclusions: Our findings support the practice of treating professional specialty as an important determinant of the results in consensus panels.

The execution and incorporation of research into practice is influenced by the relevance and credibility of the work undertaken. Part of this process can be to identify priority research questions from the service provider perspective. We sought to obtain a multidisciplinary consensus on priority research questions around the broad issue of prescribing in an inner London Primary Care Group locality. Participants were drawn from general practice, primary care nursing and community pharmacy. This paper explores how two formal consensus methods were used to facilitate multidisciplinary participation within the research arena, and the extent to which a convergence of opinion between professional groups was obtained. The use of a structured nominal group interview technique abated professional dominance and generated a diverse array of research questions. An iterative Delphi process secured a wide consensus of opinion regarding the relevance of these questions to practice. The richness of the research questions generated was attributed to the consultation process and the ability of the consensus methods used to capture the multidisciplinary perspective. The practice based research questions identified were diverse and suited to a collaborative research approach.