Measuring group proximity after deliberation The search for mutual understanding at a citizens’ summit

Many initiatives with stakeholder participation are aimed at increasing mutual understanding between relevant actors. However, so far, there is no systematic measure to measure the impact of different interventions. To enable an impact measurement regarding mutual understanding, we introduce the concept of ‘group proximity’ in the context of citizen participation. This concept was used to analyse a citizens’ summit where the participants ranked their preferences in 61 parallel group deliberations. Using a rank correlation to define group proximity proved to be effective to 1) measure the diversity in a deliberative group with respect to preferences, 2) measure how alike participants within a group ranked and 3) assess how this changed after a deliberation of the values that participants considered relevant. When there is high group proximity, participants are likely to understand the perspectives of other members of their group better than when they rank very differently. This was underlined by the outcomes of an exit survey.