The Delphi Technique

THE DELPHI TECHNIQUE

PURPOSE

The purpose of the Delphi technique is to elicit information and judgments from participants to facilitate problem-solving, planning, and decision-making. It does so without physically assembling the contributors. Instead, information is exchanged via mail, FAX, or email. This technique is designed to take advantage of participants’ creativity as well as the facilitating effects of group involvement and interaction. It is structured to capitalize on the merits of group problem-solving and minimize the liabilities of group problem-solving.

REQUIREMENTS

The Delphi technique requires a Coordinator to organize requests for information, information received, and to be responsible for communication with the participants. The Delphi technique requires an efficient communication channel to link the Coordinator with each of the participants.

PROCESS

1. Identify the issue and solicit ideas. For example:

What action could be taken to provide faster response to patient inquiries between visits?

Prepare and send the first questionnaire, which asks each participant to engage in individual brainstorming so as to generate as many ideas as possible for dealing with the issue.

2. Response to first questionnaire. Each participant lists his/her ideas (Questionnaire #1) in a brief, concise manner and returns the list anonymously to the Coordinator. These ideas need not be fully developed. In fact, it is preferable to have each idea expressed in one brief sentence or phrase. No attempt should be made to evaluate or justify these ideas at this point in time.

3. Create and send Questionnaire #2. The Coordinator prepares and sends a second questionnaire to participants that contains all of the ideas sent in response to the first questionnaire and provides space for participants to refine each idea, to comment on each idea’s strengths and weaknesses for addressing the issue, and to identify new ideas.

4. Response to second questionnaire. Participants anonymously record their responses to Questionnaire #2 and return them to the Coordinator.

5. Create and send Questionnaire #3. The Coordinator creates and sends a third questionnaire that summarizes the input from the previous step and asks for additional clarifications, strengths, weaknesses, and new ideas.

6. Continuation of the process. If desired, the Coordinator performs iterations of the preceding process until it becomes clear that no new ideas are emerging and that all strengths, weakness, and opinions have been identified.

7. Resolution. Resolution may occur in one of two ways.

• If dominant, highly evaluated ideas emerge via consensus, the exercise is declared finished. The end product is a list of ideas with their concomitant strengths and weaknesses.

• The Coordinator conducts a formal assessment of the group’s opinions of the merits of the ideas. There are a number of ways to conduct a formal evaluation. In one method, the Coordinator prepares a questionnaire that lists all the ideas and asks participants to rate each one on a scale. For example, a 7-point scale could be used that ranges from 0 (no potential for dealing with the issue) through 7 (very high potential for dealing with the issue). If this approach is used, participants send the rating forms to the Coordinator, who compiles the results and rank-orders the ideas based on the evaluations.

Nominal Group Technique: An Alternative to Brainstorming

Extension educators have for a long time used various techniques in the. hopes of ensuring Involvement and commitment of 'fair and their client/consumers. Many of these techniques are group oriented, Brain storming, for example. has the obective of giving Participants an opportunity to engage in creative Problem solving. Another approach, the nominal group technique (NGT), uses a more structured format to obtain multiple inputs from several people on a particular problem or issue. Each technique may be appropriate given a specific situation; however, NGT is probably not used as often as it should be.

A possible alternative to brain storming is NGT. This technique was originally developed by Delbecq and VandeVen2 and has been applied to adult education program planning by Vedros3. This technique is a structured variation of small group discussion methods. The process prevents the domination of discussion by a single person, encourages the more passive group members to participate, and results in a set of prioritized solutions or recommendations. The steps to follow in NGT are:

1. Divide