The Delphi technique: A review

Abstract

Background The Delphi technique is an approach with much to offer health-care research. It was first devised by the RAND corporation in the 1950s and later, in the 1970s, was rediscovered by the nursing profession. Delphi is one of a range of consensus techniques, all of which fall under the broad classification of action research approaches. The purpose of the Delphi technique is to test opinion consensus amongst a group of experts. Content A brief overview of the various consensus methods is given. The development and operation of the Delphi technique is then considered and a critical assessment of the technique is offered. Conclusions Delphi is potentially useful across a wide range of applications, however, it is important to appreciate the strengths, weaknesses and pitfalls to avoid in its application.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 407 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.