Recent research has emphasized the importance of workshops as a venue where planning support systems (PSS) are used in planning processes. Empirical studies of these workshops have previously largely overlooked facilitation, in particular the role of a moderator (steering the discussion) and/or a chauffeur (steering the PSS). Drawing on existing facilitation research, we identify four main categories of facilitation interventions: substantive, procedural, relational, and toolrelated. We use these categories to develop a novel conceptual framework for facilitation at PSS workshops. We test and develop this framework through semistructured interviews with eight experienced facilitators of PSS workshops in the US and the Netherlands. The interviews confirm the validity of the intervention categories, but also revealed a wider range of PSS-specific workshop outcomes. We conclude that successful facilitation of PSS workshops requires two different types of facilitation interventions: some to encourage PSS use, and others to prevent PSS domination of the group discussion. Facilitating PSS workshops is mainly about finding the delicate and context-dependent balance between these two extremes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.