The Multi-Attribute Consensus Building (MACB) method has been used by NCEO for over a decade to help groups prioritize strategies, decisions, recommendations, and policies (referred to as “items”) based on participants’ perceptions.  NCEO used the process again as part of a pre-conference session at the National Conference on Student Assessment in National Harbor, Maryland. The use of the MACB method was so well-received at the session that NCEO decided to publish the tool on its website. Find the tool at www.nceo.info/Tools/MACBtool.pdf.

The MACB method is a quantitative approach for determining a group’s opinion about the importance of each item on a list. This process enables a small or large group of participants to generate and discuss a set of items, weight the importance of each item, and debrief their weightings to either reach consensus or identify the sources of differences in participants’ perceptions. The items can either be generated by participants as part of the process, or generated before the process for participants to consider.

Although this method stimulates consensus building through the use of participatory decision making and weighting the importance of items, it is not always easy to reach consensus. Participants’ perceptions of items can remain unchanged even though they have participated in a consensus-building process.

NCEO’s MACB tool includes instructions for conducting the consensus-building process with small or large groups, an adaptable PowerPoint, and the consensus-building tool itself.