SRM Seminar: Expert Elicitation Techniques in the Social Sciences

You are warmly invited to join the Social Research Methods Centre's seminar, 'Expert Elicitation Techniques in the Social Sciences', with speaker Professor John Paul Gosling (Durham University)!

Wednesday 15 May 2024 | 12–1pm (BST) 

Social Sciences Building SR 14.33

Abstract: 

When empirical data are limited or difficult to obtain, expert elicitation provides a valuable methodology for quantifying subjective judgments in the social sciences. By systematically capturing knowledge from subject experts, elicitation techniques can offer insights into complex social phenomena that are challenging to measure directly. This talk will overview structured approaches to expert knowledge elicitation for reliably capturing probabilistic beliefs. Key principles include facilitating group information sharing, avoiding incoherent probability judgments through structured questioning, and using behavioural aggregation to synthesize individual judgments into consensus distributions representing the group's collective beliefs.

Notable applications of expert elicitation span diverse areas such as healthcare, environmental science and business planning. The talk will highlight our own work using expert judgments to enhance the measurement of criminal sentence severity. Through an elicitation workshop, practitioner assessments of the relative severities of different sentencing options were obtained, allowing refinement of traditional pairwise comparison scaling models.

More information about the Social Research Methods Centre is available here. 

To attend this seminar, please register through the registration form. Lunch, tea and coffee will be provided.