Citizens’ juries are a form of ‘‘minipublics,’’ small-scale experiments with citizen participation in public decision-making. The article presents a theoretical argument that improves understanding relating to the design of the citizens’ jury. We develop the claim that two discourses on democracy can be discerned: the deliberative and the pluralist. By looking at the design features of citizens...

BACKGROUND There is widespread agreement that the public should be engaged in health-care decision making. One method of engagement that is gaining prominence is the citizens' jury, which places citizens at the centre of the deliberative process. However, little is known about how the jury process works in a health-care context. There is even less clarity about how consumer perspectives are hea...

Economic and participatory methods of project appraisal have traditionally been viewed as mutually exclusive alternatives, as they address different decision making criteria. Participatory methods such citizens' juries (or value juries) have been suggested as a means of better coping with some of the problems associated with economic evaluation methods such as contingent valuation. However, par...

n the wake of Menadue’s call for setting principles to underpin our health care system, one key principle that members of “citizens’ juries” advocate is that the appropriate group to set the principles are citizens! Health services are first and foremost social institutions — that is, not just there for the people, but to be based on the values of the people. I have facilitated a number of thes...

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to elicit research ideas, priorities and outcome measures from women who suffer from urinary incontinence. DESIGN Citizens' juries gather participants together for a combination of education and deliberation on a specific topic. The juries were held in November 2007. SETTING Women living in the community with urinary incontinence. SAMPLE Purposive...

Citizens' juries are commended as a new technique for democratising health service reviews. Their usefulness is said to derive from a reliance on citizens' rational deliberation rather than on the immediate preferences of the consumer. The author questions the assertion of critical detachment and asks whether juries do in fact employ reason as a means of resolving fundamental disagreements abou...

Survey techniques such as contingent valuation have been used extensively by environmental economists to develop an understanding of consumer preferences for environmental goods. On the basis of such techniques, recommendations have been formulated in relation to environmental policy. However, the exposure of weaknesses in this method has led economists to look to other informationgathering app...

BACKGROUND The secondary use of health data for research raises complex questions of privacy and governance. Such questions are ill-suited to opinion polling where citizens must choose quickly between multiple-choice answers based on little information. OBJECTIVE The aim of this project was to extend knowledge about what control informed citizens would seek over the use of health records for ...