The Delphi Method and Marketplaces (original 1975 reference book about Delphi on my website)

1. The Delphi Method and Marketplaces(original 1975 reference book about Delphi on my website) Murray Turoff turoff@njit.edu http://is.njit.edu/turoff

2. Definition from 1975 • Design of a group communication process structured/tailored around the nature of the application and the nature of the group • Original paper and pencil rounds • Anyone can change their view • Anonymity or pennames • Scaling theory to promote understanding • Voting to focus discussion • Select “knowledgeable” people • A round took a month – three to five rounds • Respondents 15 to 500 • Prediction, policy analysis, conditional forecasts, planning, significance of contributions, new product characteristics, etc, etc. (book has many examples) © 2004 Turoff

3. Online Delphi’s Today Dynamic: entering main voting items, voting, making vote changes, and pro, con, neutral discussion comments, can all go on at once. • Each individual can focus on what they want to • System notifies user of changes • Termination of vote changes is a sign of finalization of the results • People can propose rewording (Roberts Rules of Order) • What took three months can happen in three weeks for 20-200 people (30 users, 80 main items voted, 450 discussion items, 25 modifications) • Voting really serves to focus discussion on differences of view • Three recent thesis experiments and field trials in the Information Systems Ph.D. program at NJIT • Used as a collaborative learning tool in online class discussions • System designed as a Social Decision Support System © 2004 Turoff

4. Turoff, M., Hiltz, S. R., Li, Z., Wang, Y., Cho, H., Yao, X., Online Collaborative Learning Enhancement through the Delphi Method, Proceedings for the OZCHI 2004 Conference, November 22-24, University of Wollongong, Australia • Summarizes three recent thesis efforts (message me for copy of above) • One experiment that shows structured communications much more effective in generating both more and unique ideas for both small and medium groups • Dynamic large discussions on such things as “Preventive Security Measures” and “most important things learned in a course” • Software written in Coldfusion for SQL server © 2004 Turoff

5. Observations and Implications I • Two original Delphi philosophies • A numeric result for a group view is most efficient output (most early prediction studies) • No real decision person wants a number that does not also provide the collective group cognitive model that generated it (conditional forecasts, decision support, and policy analysis) • Exposing such forecasting models has been integrated into many modern and corporate Delphi’s • However, collaborative general model building is still a challenge for design © 2004 Turoff

6. Observations and Implications II • People use and seek information to make investments • Adam Smith pointed out that a good free enterprise requires buyer and seller have access to relevant information • Useful marketplaces must incorporate the evaluation of information • Let market members scale and/or vote on relative reliability/confidence/importance of a piece of information as in Delphi but posed as an information recommender system with anonymity • How about this community having a marketplace about research hypothesis on the design and performance of marketplaces • A seer upon perceiving a flood should be the first to climb a tree – Kahlil Gibran © 2004 Turoff