Thursday, February 26, 2009

Delphi technique

Delphi technique is a way to obtain the opinion of experts without necessarily bringing them together face to face. An information gathering technique in which questionnaires are sent to informed individuals. The responses are summarized into a feedback report and used to generate subsequent questionnaires to probe more deeply into the issue under consideration

Delbecq, et al. (1975) described the Delphi technique by the following process:
1. Develop a set of questionnaires. Typically three or four questionnaires mailed to the respondents are used to obtain the required data.
2. Identify, select, and contact the respondents. Frequently a nominating process is used whereby key individuals may nominate someone with the expertise to participate in the study.
3. Select a sample size. Thirty is frequently used as an upper bound due to limited numbers of new ideas, three or four people is probably too few, and usually between ten and twenty people is reasonable.
4. Develop the first questionnaire, mail it to the respondents, and obtain the responses. For example, the questionnaire could contain ten to fifteen open-ended questions.
5. Analyze the data. Responses to questions could be grouped or categorized by frequency or other criteria.
6. Develop the second questionnaire, mail it to the respondents, and obtain the responses. This questionnaire is developed from the first questionnaire responses. It might request the respondents to review responses that have been categorized and rate them according to a scale.
7. Analyze the data. This analysis should tally the votes for each of the responses; determine various statistics such as mean, mode, standard deviation, and so on for each response; and finally, summarize additional responses for the next round.
8. Develop the third questionnaire, mail it to the respondents, and obtain the responses. Provide the respondents with the outcome of the second round and ask them if they would like to reconsider their own second round responses.
9. Analyze the data. Determine if there is a consensus.
10. Complete the final report (pp. 87-107).

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