Expert Judgments

Abstract

The use of ``expert judgments`` as a research instrument is becoming increasingly popular in political science as a tool for obtaining knowledge about difficult to measure quantities. At its simplest, expert judgment methodology does ``just what it says on the tin`` --- namely, to provide information on some objective or subjective state of the world based on a review by persons with comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of the area in question. When more than one expert is consulted, the solicitation of these judgments forms an ``expert survey``, the results of which are typically aggregated into some form of median or consensus opinion.