The Delphi technique: Past, present, and future prospects — Introduction to the special issue

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Abstract

The Delphi technique has been around for over half a century, so now seems a proper time to consider its past, present and future. This introduction characterises the papers in this special Delphi issue, which include both conceptual and empirical works. It summarises the main lessons that have been learned from these for the conduct of the technique, and provides a call for more and better empirical studies in the future.

Introduction

The Delphi technique has been around for some time now. It is difficult to resist the urge here to recapitulate the story of its origins, but we will: these details are noted in various papers in this special issue. One moment of history that is worth emphasising, however, is that of 1975, when the first edition of Linstone and Turoff's [1] edited book on Delphi first appeared and brought notice of the approach to a wider audience. Slowly at first, but at a seemingly growing rate, the technique has flourished, appearing in more and more academic domains and being used for more and more purposes. As evidence of the impact of that work, Google Scholar reveals that ‘The Delphi Method: Techniques and Applications’ has been cited over 2700 times (while it has undoubtedly been mis-cited many more times too). Furthermore, as Delphi's ubiquity has grown, so has the method evolved, with the development of numerous variants, so that it is perhaps better to talk of ‘Delphi techniques’ in the plural than in the singular. As such, though not quite at the 50th anniversary of publication of that seminal Delphi volume, now seems an apt moment to consider exactly how the method has developed, into what new areas and forms, and to what ends (especially since such a review/compendium has not occurred in this journal since one in 1975). Such consideration is the aim of this special issue.

Section snippets

The papers in this issue

The first paper in this issue by Roubelat and Marchais-Roubelat [2] appropriately delves the furthest back in history, to the original Oracle at Delphi. The paper does not only provide a forecasting history lesson, however: importantly, it finds parallels between the ancient approach and the modern-day namesake. Especially important is its consideration of the role of participants and the nature of expertise, as well as the issue of trust. Bolger and Wright [3] also provide a broader context

Concluding thoughts

The papers in this special issue bring together a wide variety of perspectives on the Delphi technique(s) from some of the most important contributors to the thinking and development of the method of the last forty-fifty years. The ubiquity of application that they hint at suggests that, in many domains, the method has filled a deep need of academics and practitioners for structured ways of assessing and combining human judgement. The more exposure the method gains, the greater its uptake; in

Gene Rowe is an independent research consultant (Gene Rowe Evaluations: email: [email protected]), who until recently was Head of Consumer Science of the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK. Since gaining his PhD from the Bristol Business School, he has published around 80 journal articles and book chapters, and, with George Wright, recently edited a special issue of the International Journal of Forecasting on group-based judgmental forecasting. His research interests focus on individual

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Gene Rowe is an independent research consultant (Gene Rowe Evaluations: email: [email protected]), who until recently was Head of Consumer Science of the Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK. Since gaining his PhD from the Bristol Business School, he has published around 80 journal articles and book chapters, and, with George Wright, recently edited a special issue of the International Journal of Forecasting on group-based judgmental forecasting. His research interests focus on individual and group decision making (especially in forecasting contexts), human understanding of risk, and the evaluation of public participation exercises and methods.

George Wright is editor of the Journal of Behavioral Decision Making and an associate editor for Journal of Forecasting and for International Journal of Forecasting. He is also an associate editor of Decision Support Systems. His publications on Delphi have appeared in Technological Forecasting and Social Change and in International Journal of Forecasting. His general research interest is in the role and validity of judgement in anticipating the future.

A special issue of technological forecasting and social change. Guest editors: Gene Rowe and George Wright.

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