Experiences in elicitation [Read before The Royal Statistical Society at a meeting on 'Elicitation' on Wednesday, April 16th, 1997, the President, Professor A. F. M. Smith in the Chair]

Abstract

Elicitation of expert opinion is becoming increasingly important in the elicitation of prior distributions. In this paper, the psychology of elicitation and the currently available methods are briefly reviewed, but the primary discussion is on the distinction between ‘general’elicitation methods for a class of problems and ‘application-specific’ methods which are useful only once. Examples of both types of elicitation are given, along with a discussion about general versus application-specific methods, and predictive versus structural elicitation