The success of a meeting and the factors which contribute to that success are elusive. Group Support Systems (GSS) have been suggested as a suitable tool for improving meetings, but very often little justification is given for this usage. It is more useful and more appropriate to analyse the characteristics of meetings before considering using a GSS to support one. An instrument is developed for this purpose with five meeting process and outcome constructs: communication, discussion quality, status effects, teamwork, and efficiency. The instrument is validated with data collected from 383 employees of a university in Hong Kong. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.