Prior to the development of the online program, Conservation Needs Assessments were generally carried out during physical workshops, where scientists, field biologists, animal husbandry experts and other stakeholders met, and worked as a single group to assess all of the species of a given Class (e.g. amphibians), in the particular country or region. This process resulted in a single assessment, along with a single set of recommended conservation actions for each species in each of the countries that the species occurs. Using the online program, multiple assessors will often work independently from each other to assess species, and generate recommendations for conservation actions.

Sometimes, more than one assessor will generate an assessment for the same species in the same country or region. It is likely that due to the differing individual expertise and experiences of each assessor, some of the data will differ between assessments for the same species. Although each and every individual assessment can be viewed, a “consolidated” version of these assessments allows for the different areas of expertise from each of the assessors to be included within a single, more holistic assessment of the conservation needs for each species.

Consolidated assessments can be found in the National Recommended Conservation Actions report and on the View Assessments page, for species which have more than one assessment in the same country.

All of the responses made by the assessors for each question are included in consolidated assessments, with an indication of the percentage of assessors who made each response in parentheses. As an example, the following consolidated assessment shows that all assessors (100%) agree that the answer to question 5 is Yes; half of the assessors (50%) consider that the answer to question 6 is Yes, but outcome is unknown, and half (50%) consider that the answer to question 6 is No; and one third of the assessors (33%) think that the answer to question 7 is Threats are reversible in time frame, while two thirds (67%) think that Threats cannot/will not be reversed in time:



In consolidated assessments, all of the conservation actions recommended by each single assessment are included. For each conservation action, the number of assessments for the species in the selected country is shown in parentheses, along with the percentage of those assessments that recommended each of the conservation actions:
 

In the example above, 3 individual assessments are included in this consolidated assessment, with 66.67% of the assessments recommending Rescue as a conservation action for this species, 100% of the assessments recommending In Situ Conservation etc.