UC Davis

This is a report of the process by which the Israeli expert panel on trauma resilience generated a set of axioms. The first part of the article discusses how the expert panel members were selected and polled to determine which among the membership were best qualified to be interviewed by the research team. The next section of the article describes the process by which 7 of the expert panelists were interviewed in Israel using professional video production equipment that generated over 8 hr of high quality video data for later analysis. The final section of the article describes the process by which each of the interviews were analyzed and indexed to generate a list of trauma resilience axioms and sent to interviewees for their review and editing. In addition to the list of axioms generated from their video interviews, the expert panelists were supplied with the video of their interview with Quick Time markers that linked each axiom with the exact point on the video interview. The article describes the final phase of the process: generating a final list of trauma resilience axioms for the expert panel to rate. The results of the expert panel’s ratings are described and establish 83 trauma resilience axioms which fall into 3 categories: those related to individuals, communities, and related contexts. The article then includes a discussion of the findings in terms of the potential utility of this approach for other projects with the goal of reaching consensus among experts.