What Is the Delphi Method?

The Delphi method, also known as the expert investigation method, was initiated and implemented by the American Rand Corporation in 1946.It is essentially an anonymous anonymous feedback method. Sorting, summarizing, statistics, and then anonymously feedback to the experts, solicit opinions again, then focus, and then feedback, until a consensus is reached.

Delphi is the Chinese translation of Delphi. In the 1950s, the American Rand Company and Douglas Company worked together to develop an effective and reliable method for collecting expert opinions, named after "Delphi". After that, the method was widely used in commercial, military, education, health care and other fields. The application of Delphi method in medicine first started from the research of nursing work, and showed its superiority and applicability in the process of use, which has been favored by more and more researchers.

The Delphi method is essentially a feedback anonymous correspondence method. The general process is: after obtaining the opinions of experts for the problem to be predicted, collating, summarizing, statistics, and then anonymously feedback to the experts, soliciting opinions again, focusing, and then feeding back, until a consensus is reached. The process can be expressed simply as follows:

Ask for expert opinion anonymously-induction, statistics-anonymous feedback-induction, statistics ... Stop after several rounds.

It can be seen that the Delphi method is a collective anonymous thought exchange process using correspondence. It has three characteristics that are significantly different from other expert prediction methods, namely anonymity, multiple feedbacks, and statistical responses from groups.

In the implementation of the Delphi method, there are always two people in action, one is the organizer of the forecast, and the other is the selected expert.

The first thing to note is that the questionnaire in the Delphi method is different from the usual

(I) Index method

The indexes in this book are as follows:

IindexTechnical Importance Index;

Hindex-an index to promote the development of high-tech industries;

Tindexindex for transforming and upgrading traditional industries;

Sindex index for environmental protection and comprehensive development and utilization of resources;

Eindexindustrial prospect index;

Cindex-an index for improving international competitiveness;

MindexIndustrialization cost index;

Lindex-An index for improving the quality of people's lives.

The number of experts who choose "high", "high", "medium", "low", and "low" for a certain indicator is Nl, N2, N3, N4, and N5, respectively.

index = (100 × Nl + 75 × N2 + 50 × N3 + 25 × N4) / Nall (1)

Nall is the number of all feedback experts.

To calculate the importance of a technology to China, the following formula can be used

Lindex = (100 × Nl + 75 × N2 + 50 × N3 + 25 × N4) / Nall (2)

When all experts consider the importance of the project to be "high", its index is 100; when all experts think it is not important, its index is 0.

When calculating the industrialization cost index, in order to maintain the consistency of each index, the following formula is used:

Mindex = (100 × Nl + 75 × N2 + 50 × N3 + 25 × N4) / Nall (3)

The larger the index, the smaller the cost of industrialization; conversely, the smaller the index, the larger the cost of industrialization.

Delphi method is an expert prediction method which is produced to overcome the shortcomings of the expert meeting method. In the forecasting process, experts do not know each other and do not interact with each other, which overcomes the disadvantages that experts often fail to express in the expert meeting law, the opinions of authoritative figures dominate the opinions of others. Experts can truly and fully express their forecast opinions.

1. Involve experts in forecasting and make full use of their experience and knowledge;

2. The use of anonymous or back-to-back methods allows each expert to make his own judgment independently and freely;

3 Several rounds of feedback during the forecasting process have gradually converged the opinions of experts.

These characteristics of Delphi method make it one of the most effective judgment and prediction methods.

Adequacy of resource utilization. As a result of absorbing different experts and predictions, the experience and knowledge of experts are fully used; the reliability of the final conclusions. Due to the use of anonymity or back-to-back, each expert can make his own judgment independently without being affected by other complicated factors; the uniformity of the final conclusion. The prediction process must go through several rounds of feedback to gradually converge the opinions of experts.

It is precisely because of the above characteristics that Delphi method makes it stand out in many methods of judgment and prediction or decision-making. The advantage of this method is that it is simple and easy to implement, and it is scientific and practical. It can avoid the fears of authority during the conference discussions, such as stubborn opinions, or unwillingness to conflict with others because of concerns; The opinions expressed by everyone can be collected quickly, and the participants can easily accept the conclusions.

Some possible shortcomings of group decision-making can be avoided. The person with the loudest or highest position does not have the opportunity to control the group will, because everyone's opinions will be collected. In addition, managers can ensure that important opinions are not ignored when soliciting opinions for decision-making.

1. The selected experts should be representative and authoritative;

2. Before making a prediction, you should first get the support of the participants to ensure that they can make every prediction carefully to improve the effectiveness of the prediction. At the same time, it is necessary to explain the significance and role of the forecast to the senior management of the organization, and obtain the support of the decision-making level and other senior management personnel;

3 The design of the questionnaire should be accurate, and it should not cause ambiguity. Don't ask too many questions at one time. Don't ask questions that are not related to the purpose of prediction. The questions included in the consultation should not be mutually exclusive; the questions asked should be all experts can answer. Problems, and as far as possible, all experts can understand from the same perspective;

4 When conducting statistical analysis, different issues should be treated differently, and different authorities should be given different weights for the authority of different experts instead of generalizing;

5. The information provided to experts should be as sufficient as possible for them to make judgments;

6. Experts are only required to make rough numerical estimates, not very precise.

7. Questions must be concentrated, targeted, and not overly dispersed, so that each event constitutes an organic whole. Questions must be queued according to level, simple first and then complex; first comprehensive and then local. This can easily arouse the interest of experts to answer questions.

8. The opinion of the investigation unit or the leading group should not be imposed on the investigating opinion. It is necessary to prevent the phenomenon of induction, to avoid the expert opinion from moving closer to the leading group, and to reach a prediction result that the expert meets the opinion of the leading group.

9. Avoid combining events. If an event includes two aspects that the expert agrees with and the expert disagrees with, the expert will have difficulty answering.

The specific implementation steps of the Delphi method are as follows:

1. Determine survey topics, formulate survey outlines, and prepare information to be provided to experts (including forecast purpose, deadline, survey form, and filling method, etc.).

2. Form an expert group. Identify experts based on the scope of knowledge required for the project. The number of experts can be determined according to the size of the project to be predicted and the width of the area involved. Generally, it does not exceed 20 people.

3 Ask all experts the questions to be predicted and related requirements, and attach all background material about the problem, and ask the experts to ask what else they need. A written response is then given by the expert.

4 Various experts put forward their own prediction opinions based on the materials they received, and explained how they used these materials and put forward their predicted values.

5. Summarize the opinions of experts for the first time, put them into a chart, compare them, and then distribute them to experts to let experts compare their different opinions with others and modify their opinions and judgments. You can also organize the opinions of experts, or ask other experts with higher status to comment, and then distribute these opinions to experts, so that they can modify their opinions after reference.

6. Collect the revised opinions of all experts, summarize them, and distribute them to experts again for the second revision. Collecting opinions round by round and giving feedback to experts is

Expert opinion independence

Due to the differences in identity and status among expert members and other social reasons, it is possible that some of them may abandon their reasonable claims because they are unwilling to criticize or deny the opinions of others. To prevent such problems, experts must avoid face-to-face brainstorming, and the experts must provide their own opinions.

Based on knowing the business

The selection of experts should be based on their knowledge of the internal and external conditions of the enterprise. Experts can be front-line managers or companies

For example, a book distributor uses Delphi method to predict the sales volume of a monograph. The

The Delphi method is related to and different from the common expert meeting method of convening experts to obtain consensus predictions through collective discussions. The Delphi method can take advantage of the expert meeting method, that is,

Can give full play to the role of experts, brainstorming, and high accuracy.

Can express the points of divergence of the opinions of experts, take the strengths of each family, and avoid the weaknesses of each family.

At the same time, the Delphi method can avoid the disadvantages of the expert meeting method:

Authorities' opinions influence the opinions of others;

Some experts are unwilling to express their opinions differently from others because of their emotions;

Out of self-esteem, unwilling to modify my original incomplete opinions.

The main disadvantages of the Delphi method are: the lack of ideological communication may have a certain subjective one-sidedness; it is easy to ignore the opinions of a few people, which may cause the predicted results to deviate from the reality; there is a subjective effect of the organizer

1. Link application of Delphi method

According to the links covered by the Delphi method, it can be divided into two types: single-link application and dual-link application. Single link application means that Delphi method covers only one link. In specific evaluation practice, organizers often use Delphi method to complete the second or third link. Dual-link application refers to the use of Delphi method to achieve the evaluation task in the two links of comprehensive evaluation.

2. The full application of Delphi method

The full application of the Delphi method is an extension of the dual link application. Similarly, according to the strength of the panel's constraints, the Delphi method can be divided into two types: restricted type and open type applications. Restricted full-process application means that the organizer selects an expert group and provides key information in the evaluation process. Open-type full process application means that the organizer selects an expert group and does not provide key information in the evaluation process but only informs certain auxiliary information. If only the purpose of the evaluation and the description of the final return result, or some information on the evaluation index are required, experts are required to independently establish the evaluation index, select the evaluation method and implement the evaluation according to their own understanding ^[3] .