A wide range of stakeholders may have interests in integrated assessments.  These include not only people (or organisations) with statutory responsibilities for the issue under consideration, but also all those who might be affected either by the issue itself, or by actions taken to address it.

A key step in developing any assessment is to consider who these stakeholders might be, and how they might be involved.  In doing so, it is useful to recognise the different roles that the stakeholders might have (see link to left) both because this may help to identify stakeholders who would otherwise be ignored, and because it can help to work out what their specific concerns might be, and how best to involve them.

It also needs to be recognised that any individual may fulfil more than one of these roles (e.g. as victim and manager) both at the same time, and over time as events play out.   ‘Stakeholdership’ is thus not a fixed condition, but emerges out of any issue or event.  For this reason defining stakeholders is not always easy, and the full range of stakeholders may only become evident as the issue is fleshed out.  Wherever possible, it is therefore important to keep an open mind about who the stakeholders are, and to be prepared to involve additional people or organisations as new aspects of the problem emerge.