Terminological consensus is the process by which all levels of terminology in a field (i.e. a concept, a conceptual system, a term and/or a terminological definition) can be regulated and agreed upon by experts. In terminology, we distinguish between an implicit and an explicit terminological consensus. In the former, the terminology is tacitly accepted by the professional community of use as, for example, a term used by only one expert eventually comes to be used by the majority of the profession or by the profession as a whole. In the case of an explicit terminology consensus, the consensus is based on a terminological project and is endorsed by a large number of experts – resulting in a terminology document (dictionary, paper, guidelines, etc.). There is not yet a uniform methodology for the development of an explicit terminology consensus, both locally or internationally. In this thesis, we developed a new method, called the Delphi Terminological Consensus (delfski terminološki dogovor, DETERMIND), which is based on the foundations of Terminology and the Delphi method for expert consensus building, which is used in several different disciplines, including Medicine. We described the steps of DETERMIND: preparation, formulation, refinement, validation, analysis, and presentation of the terminological consensus. We described the process for each type of terminological information in detail, and proposed basic non-statistical and statistical termination criteria and a basis for statistical analysis. Each step of the developed DETERMIND method is comprehensively illustrated with examples and graphical representations.
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