Developing A White Hydrogen Economy

 Delphi technique

The Delphi technique is a coordinated group interaction process used for forecasting and decision making. It is carried out by grouping remote experts into panels and using questionnaires instead of face-to-face meetings. The main idea behind the Delphi technique is to control the indirect interaction between experts and manage the tendency for expert judgement to converge as the process goes on. “In essence, Delphi is a vehicle and a method for informed consensus-building within a group with respect to a complex problem by using a series of questionnaires delivered in multiple iterations to collect data from a panel of selected participants – “panellists”.” (Fink-Hafner et al., 2019). There are no set number of members/experts that should be used to create the panel. But panels with fewer than 10 members and those with over 100 are rare. Typically, the group of participants usually number between 10 and 100 experts.

 

Somes of the advantages of using the Delphi method are it prevents direct confrontation between experts, it serves to bridge together existing knowledge and areas of agreement and disagreement, does not require face to face meeting so enables independent thought from each expert. It also reduces the negative effect of noise when an in-person group process occurs, encourages creativity and honesty, and helps to prevent the collective grouping from having any influence on the direction of the outcome.

 

Some of the limitations of the Delphi techniques are, it can be time consuming resulting in experts dropping out of the process, monetary payments or moral persuasion may cause participants input to be biased towards certain results, anonymity ingrained into the process can cause less ownership of ideas, the slow response rate of some experts, possible limited viewpoints, and uneven range of expertise among the members of the panel.

 

The Delphi technique steps.

Experts are selected. The Delphi method starts with the selection of a diverse collection of experts that are from various backgrounds. One of the key aspects of the selection process is the maintaining of anonymity among the group.

 

Iterative data collection. At this stage the data is collected from a set of questions in a series of rounds. In the first round, the panel experts are provided with a predefined set of open-ended questions based on the topic of research. The panel experts then provide their responses, explanations or predictions anonymously or the names are scrubbed from submissions before it is shared with the other members of the panel.

 

Feedback and Collation: The responses obtained from the first round of submission are collected, collated and summarized. The following rounds the panel experts are provided with the summary of the responses from each previous round and are asked to reconsider their own responses given the responses of their fellow experts.

Consensus building. The process continues for several rounds of submission summarization, where all the experts are allowed to revise their submitted answer based of the other expert’s feedback. The goal of this iterative process is to have the expert’s answers converge towards a consensus or conversely highlight an area of unchanging disagreement. Once consensus is reached these areas are analyzed and then presented as insights or predictions.

 

The Delphi method facilitates the bringing together of diverse expert opinions, reduced bias in recommendations, while achieving consensus on the research topic. “Expert consensus achieved through the Delphi process is considered to be more reliable and objective than the opinion of a single expert because it maximizes the benefits of engaging a group of knowledgeable individuals.” (Khodyakov, D, 2023). The method is very useful in tackling complex problems of where the future is uncertain. 

 

Nominal group technique.

The Nominal group technique is an interview process where the participants of the interview are all in each other’s presence, but instead of speaking out their opinions/ideas they write them down. “A nominal group is defined as ‘a group in which individuals work in the presence of others but do not verbally interact’.” (MacPhail, 2001). The nominal group technique is created in such a way as to allow all participants to provide input into the process and not just the more vocal members of the group. It allows for all members to participate in the process equally and avoid the potential of the process being dominated by more vocal members. “The NGT is a highly structured face-to-face group interaction, which empowers participants by providing an opportunity to have their voices heard and opinions considered by other members.” (McMillan et al., 2016). Nominal group technique has been used as an evaluation tool in medicine, nursing, engineering, to prioritize items and identify areas in systems that need to be changed.

 

The nominal group technique process is as follows.

The first step is the Introduction. At this stage the facilitator introduces the reason the participants are undergoing the think tank process as well as setting the rules and the structure that the process will follow.

The next set in the process is the creating of the individual responses sometimes called the silent generation stage. This step is usually allotted 20mins wherein each participant is allowed to silently consider the question and record their individual ideas.

The next step is the consolidation and clarification stage. In a round robin format the facilitator asks each participant to read out aloud one idea to the group. The ideas that are provided are collected exactly as they are spoken out aloud by the participants but are not yet discussed. The group members are allowed to think up new ideas during this period but must keep their ideas to themselves until their turn comes around again in the round robin format. This stage goes on until there are no more ideas from the group to collect. After no more ideas are produced by the group the collected ideas are clarified and grouped. The participants all agree on which ideas are similar and can be grouped together, and ideas are allowed to be altered and or excluded as they are then grouped into themes. The ideas are all thoroughly discussed, so that all the participants have a full understanding of all the ideas collected. Participants are allowed to disagree with an idea since they will be able to provide their ranking of the idea at the next stage.

The next step is the voting or ranking stage. In this stage the participants are provided a sheet on which to rank their top 5 ideas in order of importance. This ranking process is done confidentially after which the ranking for each idea is summed across the group and provided to the group for further discussion. Reranking is allowed for a set number of times or until no ranking changes occur.

 

 

References: -

Fink-Hafner, D., Dagen, T., Doušak, M., Novak, M., & Hafner-Fink, M. (2019). Delphi Method: Strengths and Weaknesses. Metodoloski Zvezki, 16(2), 1-19.

MacPhail, A. (2001). Nominal Group Technique: A useful method for working with young people. British educational research journal, 27(2), 161-170. https://doi.org/10.1080/01411920120037117

McMillan, S. S., King, M., & Tully, M. P. (2016). How to use the nominal group and Delphi techniques. International journal of clinical pharmacy, 38, 655-662.