Conducting a "conflict assessment"    See also Typical flow for an assessment

What a conflict assessment can tell you? A conflict assessment could help the mediator and parties determine how and whether to proceed with an alternative process to resolve the parties’ dispute. The conflict assessment and the neutral convening can address the following questions:

• What is the nature and context of this conflict?  Among whom?
• What issues need resolution?
• What is a realistic scope of conflict to address in the proposed process?
• What has triggered this conflict? What other conflict triggers are likely? 
• What behaviors and actions sustain the conflict? Can negative results be mitigated?
• Who should participate? Are participants willing to engage in a collaborative process?
• What should that process include and how will it be designed?
• Is it likely that a process can be effective?
• What are the participants attitudes about addressing this conflict?
• If not resolved, can conflict be reduced?

The product of a conflict assessment - the report and recommendation. A conflict assessment may result in a written or informal oral report that contains a recommendation about whether there is a process can be recommended to address the conflict. This is useful whether the conflict is internal (within an organization) or external - involving third parties. 

The conflict assessment process often results in a report (oral or written) that addresses the following:

• What was done in the conflict assessment and how was it done.
• What was learned (often reported without attribution).
• Identification of key issues and conflicts.
• Recommendations about how or whether to proceed to resolve or diminish the conflict.

Other commentators. 
Mediator Howard Bellman (as quoted by McKearnan, see below) suggests the following questions can be answered in interviewing the parties:

• What issues are important?
• Who are the parties?
• What are the interests of those parties?
• What is each party’s Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA)?
• What is the likelihood that a consensus can be achieved?

Christopher Moore's "Circle of Conflict" looks at "unnecessary conflict" and "genuine conflict" in the following categories:

• Relationship conflicts (strong emotions, misperceptions or stereotypes, poor or miscommunication, negative repetitive behavior)
• Data conflicts (lack of information, misinformation, difference as to what is relevant, different interpretations, different assessment procedures) 
• Value conflicts (day to day values, terminal values, self definitional values)
• Structural conflicts (role definitions, time constraints, geo-physical relations, unequal power, unequal resources)
• Interest conflicts (substantive, procedural, psychological)

Sources: Conflict Assessment: A Preliminary Step That Enhances Chances Of Success, Sarah McKearnan, Consensus, April 1997; "Conflict Assessment," Professor Wehr, see http://spot.colorado.edu/~wehr/40GD1.HTM;  see also The Consensus Building Handbook, Lawrence Susskind, Sarah McKearnan & Jennifer Thomas-Larmer, Sage Publications, 1999; Christopher W. Moore Decision Making and Conflict Management, Boulder Colorado CDR Assoc, 1986.