The Sounding Board is Sciencewise’s new and innovative tool to gain rapid public input on challenging issues involving science and technology. It brings together a demographically balanced panel of 8-12 citizens selected from our diverse pool of 100 registered participants – all of whom are familiar with discussion on science and technology issues, in a verbal, real-time online discussion.

An event was held at the Science Museum from on an evening in January 2016. The event was piloted by Sciencewise, to understand whether one-off, public workshops could be a way of delivering useful information to policymakers, while also raising awareness of key issues, and the visibility of the department’s involvement. The idea was that such events might be used to gauge whether a full dialogue was worthwhile, or be used as a supplement to a dialogue.

This toolkit considers some tools and techniques to address the question: “As part of my policy development I would like to take account of the views and values of the public – what should I do?”

This new edition of the Sciencewise Quality Framework (published March 2016) provides guidance on assessing the quality of public dialogue. It is designed to sit alongside and supplement the Sciencewise Guiding Principles.