![]() ![]() When do we use the design? – Linstone and Turoff (2002), two of the earliest researchers with the Delphi technique, offered a number of common reasons why a researcher might select Delphi as the research design of choice: Is the Delphi technique valid? Future posts will address some of those issues. Questions as to who is an “expert” need to be answered. There are challenges, however, with this research design. The Delphi technique offers a somewhat unique because of its focus on the future. There were 72 doctoral dissertations incorporating a Delphi study from the University of Phoenix in the last ten years. ![]() There were 926 doctoral dissertations that used some form of Delphi study between 19, with more than a third in the last 10 years. In searching the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses database, the growth in Delphi studies has been almost exponential. Use of the Delphi method in medical research is the most common field of application, based on the number of articles published. Did the opinions of anonymous experts affect the answers of other experts, knowing that the ideal was to reach consensus?įrom that early beginning in the 1950’s and 60’s, the Delphi technique has evolved and grown significantly. However, through a series of rounds, the study evaluated participant responses to 20 questions, and the primary focus was on how the participants responded to the answers from the other participants (all anonymous to one another). ![]() These were questions that most people would not know, although some of the participants might be able to make more educated guesses than others. For example, in one early experiment, participants were asked “What is the surface of the Moon in thousand square miles?” and “What is the area in square miles of Los Angeles County?” (Brown & Helmer, p. infrastructure? The first studies were primarily about achieving consensus among experts and trying to determine if this form of prediction was valid. For instance, how many bombs would the Russians need to drop on the United States to destabilize the U. Without going into a lot of detail, the first Delphi studies sought numerical answers to complex problems. The process involved a series of questionnaires “interspersed with information and opinion feedback” (Helmer, 1967). The original Delphi technique (“Classical Delphi”) was a research project to study the idea of achieving consensus among experts regarding complex military issues where little published information was available. There are, however, exceptions to this, notably the Policy Delphi. In most cases, the goal is to approach a consensus among the expert panel as to future “best” solutions. ![]() The Delphi technique is a “consensus” research method. They do not know who the other participants might be. The technique uses a series of rounds or iterations where information is given back to the participants for review. The defining characteristics of the Delphi technique are as follows: The original research was a classified military effort involving a group of multi-disciplinary experts whose goal was to try and forecast the effects of future warfare on the United States (Gordon & Helmer, 1964). The Delphi technique originated in the 1950’s as a research project funded by the United States Air Force and developed by the RAND Corporation. 458) as to the best workable solutions to the problem. The object “is to obtain the most reliable consensus of opinion of a group of experts” (Dalkey & Helmer, 1963, p. Introduction - The Delphi technique is a research design, usually considered a qualitative method, which was designed to forecast viable solutions to problems where data was missing or incomplete. ![]()
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