Assessing the Quality of Community Jury Deliberations in Online and In-Person Community Juries Using a Deductive...

Community juries require participants to engage in group deliberations, seeking to reach a consensus or verdict on the research question(s). Community juries have traditionally taken place in-person, although holding them online or in a hybrid format is increasingly common, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic. In order for the community jury method to be used successfully, it is crucial to ensure that the goals of the deliberative process are accomplished.

To assess the quality of unfacilitated deliberation in community juries held either online or in-person.

We conducted a secondary analysis of three community juries exploring the public acceptability of novel cancer screening and referral policies informed by personal risk. Two juries were held online, and one was held in-person. We analysed the deliberations via framework analysis, using a previously developed deductive coding framework that addresses the theoretical goals underlying the deliberative process. Participants also completed post-jury surveys including questions relating to their experiences of the online or in-person setting.

Nine participants attended the in-person jury, and a total of 15 attended online. Both online and in-person juries achieved all six deliberative goals to some extent with juries in both settings able to participate in successful deliberation and produce well-informed recommendations from a societal perspective.

These findings suggest that community juries delivered both online and in-person have the potential to facilitate high-quality deliberations, and both settings can be used to successfully conduct community juries.

Four PPI representatives, who represented people with different characteristics, including a personal history of cancer, were involved throughout this research. Their contribution included the formation of the research question for the funding application, design of participant-facing aspects of the research, such as presentations used within the juries, and creation of lay summaries of findings.