The Delphi method

Application 3 - Long term

Piastra Petri

Application 3 - Long term

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A method to structure group communication and reach group consensus

A technique to explore stakeholder policy priorities in synthetic biology

The origin of Delphi is in the post-war United States at the RAND Corporation for realising military and strategic analysis5 . In essence, Delphi is a method to structure group communication in order to enable a group of people to agree about the estimate on either the occurrence of phenomena or one/more of its features.

Description of the method Linstone and Turoff defined Delphi as a “a method for structuring a group communication process so that the process is effective in allowing a group of individuals, as a whole, to deal with a complex problem” ([1], 3) . The measure of estimates asked to the Delphi group is reached by consensus. In fact, the method is a procedure “to obtain the most reliable consensus of a group of experts… by a series of intensive questionnaires interspersed with controlled opinion feedback” (Dalkey and Helmer in [2], 236).

The handling of a problem through Delphi may be described according to the following steps [3]:

• Preliminary phase:

◦ definition of the problem; ◦ definition of the required expertise;

◦ preparation of the Delphi questionnaires;

◦ selection of experts.

• Execution phase:

◦ submission of Delphi questionnaires;

◦ analysis of answers;

◦ feedback and new submission of questionnaires.

• Evaluation and reporting phase:

◦ analysis of the answers collected in the final round;

◦ final report.

Throughout all its phases, the Delphi process has the following essential features:

• Anonymity: it is achieved by the use of questionnaires, allowing the members of the groups to make their answers privately;

• Iteration: it occurs by means of presenting the constructed questionnaire over a number of rounds, allowing panellists to change their opinions;

• Feedback: it occurs between rounds, during which each group member is informed of other members’ opinions. The last remark about the Delphi process is about the number of rounds.

Though Delphi is an established longitudinal research process, there is no agreement on how many iterations are necessary to reach reliable results. In the literature, the minimum number of rounds implemented, despite many examples that implement more iterations [4], is two [5].

References

[20] Linstone HA, Turoff M (1975) The Delphi method: techniques and applications. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.

[21] Rowe G, Wright G, Bolger F (1991) Delphi: A reevaluation of research and theory. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 39:235–251. doi: 10.1016/0040-1625(91)90039-I

[22] Woudenberg F (1991) An evaluation of Delphi. Technological Forecasting and Social Change 40:131– 150. doi: 10.1016/0040-1625(91)90002-W

23] Palomba R (2005) Il tempo è dalla nostra parte. Scenari per l’Italia al 20130. IRPPS-CNR, Rome

[24] Gavigan JP, Cahill E (1997) Overview of recent European and non-European national technology foresight studies. IPTS, Seville