A research and discussion note: The macrostructure of consensus statements

This research note presents a preliminary study of the structure of consensus statements (CSs). The consensus statement is released by a medical association after calling a consensus development conference on a pertinent medical issue. Using a very small corpus, this note attempts to characterize consensus statements by identifying the sequence of moves/steps in this type of publication, and speculates on a possible relationship to other review articles. Some pedagogical applications are also indicated.