Knowledge elicitation in conceptual model building: A case study in modeling a regional Dutch health care system

Client-oriented model builing entails eliciting relevant knowledge from the mental models of participants. System dynamicists commonly employ interviews with individuals followed by one or more discussions in freely interacting groups to capture knowledge from a client group. At least two problems arise as a result of this approach. First, it usually demands a high time investment from the client group. Second, freely interacting groups have several drawbacks and are often outperformed by individuals when it comes to generating relevant knowledge. To overcome these difficulties a combination of different techniques for knowledge elicitation is proposed, which is based on useful elements from existing group process methods. The approach consists of three stages with intermediate feedback to participants and can be considered a variant of the Estimate-Feedback-Talk approach. Its use is illustrated with a case study of model building in Dutch health care.