U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Citizens' Advisory Committees and the Use of Nominal Group Techniques

NCJ Number
122080
Journal
Police Chief Volume: 11 Issue: 56 Dated: (November 1989) Pages: 71-72
Author(s)
A W Cole
Date Published
1989
Length
2 pages
Annotation
One way to formalize the process of obtaining citizen input for police policy and develop a coordinated police response is through the use of nominal group technique (NGT) with a citizen advisory committee.
Abstract
The NGT process has three goals: to systematically obtain citizen input into the police function, identifying special interests and communitywide needs; to bring together the diverse groups to enhance mutual understanding and foster commitment to common goals; and to develop better police-community relations through improved interaction. NGT should be used only for judgmental or creative decisionmaking. It involves four steps: silent generation of ideas, round-robin recording of those ideas, discussion, and prioritization. NGT allows for maximum feasible participation by group members in the decisionmaking process by avoiding the dominance of group output by strong personality types and allowing all participants the opportunity for influencing the direction of the group decision outcome. The article concludes with a description of how the community of Delray Beach, Fla., used NGT in the context of a citizen advisory committee to obtain citizen input on law enforcement issues and priorities. 4 footnotes.