Return to APA Collection Inventory Page
Text of document:
could vote in these sessions. Since a member of the planning committee
was serving as parliamentarian and could not make any comments in any session
or vote, the actual possible voting delegate number was to be 47. This
was reduced by 1 to 46 for the reasons given below. The 37 delegates from
among the applicants were chosen to be broadly representative of the field.
Region of the country, practice setting, level of training interest, gender,
cultural diversity, and subspecialization within the field, and seniority
were all considered in the selections. The selected delegates quite closely
matched these characteristics in the total pool of applicants. Six alternate
delegates were also selected to be available in case any of the selected
delegates was unable to attend. All but one of the selected delegates accepted
the invitation to participate in the conference and one other delegate
could not attend due to a last minute injury. An alternate filled one delegate
position on short notice. The constitution of the breakout groups was determined
after the selection of delegates had taken place and remained the same
throughout the conference. The planning committee tried to make certain
that every breakout group mirrored the demographic characteristics on which
the delegates had been selected though this was not possible for all characteristics.
The demographics of the applicant pool and the selected delegates with
respect to region of the country, practice setting, level of training interest,
gender, cultural diversity, and subspecialization within the field, and
seniority, as far as could be determined from their curriculum vitae, are
given in Appendix D.
CONFERENCE DESIGN
H. Julia Hannay
The format and size of the conference was chosen because it has been
used successfully at other conferences to produce a consensus document
(Belar et al., 1989; Belar et al., 1993). Dr. Bieliauskas served as the
parliamentarian. He was chosen for that role since he had previous experience
as parliamentarian at similar national conferences and currently serves
as parliamentarian for the American Psychological Association Council of
Representatives. Dr. Bieliauskas explained why parliamentary rules are
used and went over some basic rules to be followed, according to Roberts
Rules of Order Revised (Roberts, 1979). During the 3 days of deliberation,
each major issue was first introduced by a planning committee member, worked
on in breakout groups, brought back to the plenary session by each group
leader, discussed again in the plenary session, and voted on by the delegates.
If an issue was not resolved, the breakout group chairs were expected to
work on the issue together and to bring it back to the delegates again.
In this way, a document would be hammered out. All but one of the breakout
groups consisted of a chair, a recorder, and six other delegates. The remaining
group had a chair, a recorder, and only five other delegates. (The planning
committee received notice of the unavailability of one delegate on the
first day of the conference and so was unable to replace the delegate with
an alternate.) Only one breakout session was attended by one planning committee
member. Each group chair was responsible for seeing that the group produced
a statement on the particular issue by the time each breakout session was
finished. The recorder kept notes concerning the discussions in his/her
breakout groups on a portable computer. These notes were used by the group
chair and the recorder to create short articles outlining the deliberations
of their respective groups on the various issues. The order of the authors
of these articles reflects their respective contributions to the writing.
The recorder also prepared each statement for the group and transferred
the statement to floppy disc so that it could be projected by computer
and LCD unit to the large screen in the plenary session. Dr. Hamsher manned
the plenary session computer throughout the conference doing an extraordinary
job of reconciling parts of statements or combining them as requested by
breakout group chairs and delegates. The plenary sessions were taped and
transcribed. For this reason, anyone speaking in the plenary session was
required to go up to one of six microphones in the room and to say his/her
name before speaking. Transcriptions of plenary sessions were summarized
for the proceedings by planning committee members. The reports of the breakout
(Group chairs in the plenary sessions were not summarized separately since
the material is essentially part of their respective breakout group summaries
and other plenary session material.
The tentative schedule for deliberations was handed to the delegates
when they arrived and was modified as the need arose. In fact, the original
Saturday schedule was completely abandoned and replaced with one full day
and evening plenary session on Saturday, September 6, which resulted in
the production of the final policy statement by the delegates.
The planning committee worked diligently throughout the week and after
the conference to assist with administrative details, changes in conference
procedures, and final grammatical editing of the policy statement and preparation
of the proceedings.
CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Wednesday, September 3, 1997
6:00 pm-7:00 pm - Registration
7:00 pm-7: 15 pm - Welcoming Comments and Charge to the Delegates
7:15 pm-8:00 pm - Developmental Milestones in the Specialty of Clinical
Neuropsychology
8:00 pm-9:45 pm - Reception
Thursday, September 4, 1997
7:00 am-8:00 am - Breakfast
8:00 ain-8: 15 am - Introduction and Parliamentary Rules
8:15 arn-8:30 am - Charge for Question I
8:30 arn-9: 15 am - Breakout Groups on Question I
9:15 am- 10:00 am - Chairs Report
10:00 am-10:20 am - Break
10:20 am-] 1:00 am - Breakout Groups on Question I
11:00 am] 1:30 am - Chars Meet
11:30 am-i 2:00 am - Plenary Session and Vote
12:00 arn-l:30 am - Lunch
1:30 pm-i :45 pm - Charge for Question II
1:45 pm-3:30 pm - Breakout Groups on Question II
3:30 pm-3:50 pm - Break
3:50 pm-4:30 pm - Breakout Groups on Question II
(End of text)
| ||||
