Overview
A psychological investigation of the Delphi technique as an aid to improving group judgment and decision making. The project will involve experimentation and statistical analysis of data from the experiments.
Summary of research
Groups provide several benefits over individuals for judgment and decision making, but they suffer from problems too. Structured-group techniques, like Delphi, use strictly controlled information exchange between individuals to retain positive aspects of group interaction, while ameliorating negative. These methods regularly use 'nominal' groups that interact in a remote, distributed, and often anonymous manner, thus lending themselves to internet applications, with a consequent recent increase in popularity. However, evidence for the utility of the techniques is scant, major reasons for which being difficulties maintaining experimental control and logistical problems in recruiting sufficient empirical ‘groups’ to produce statistically meaningful results. As a solution, we present the Simulated Group Response Paradigm, where individual responses are first elicited in a pre-study – or created by the experimenter – then subsequently fed back to highly-controlled simulated groups. This paradigm facilitates investigation of factors leading to virtuous opinion change in groups, and subsequent development of structured-group techniques.
The Simulated Group Response Paradigm (SGRP)
To aid in the conduct of research in this area, we suggest that research should focus on identifying how to achieve valid or virtuous opinion change in individual ‘group’ members, and that this is best done using simulated groups in which the nature and quantity of feedback from supposed fellow panellists (who may or may not be real) is manipulated in a controlled manner in order to allow the answering of precise experimental questions with sufficient power to enable the obtaining of statistically significant results. We call the protocol we have developed the Simulated Group Response Paradigm (SGRP). We use the term ‘paradigm’ deliberately, as the approach involves a general methodology within which are a variety of specific procedures that are informed by our theoretical outlook, which is that the intent of research should be to establish and explain the factors (and their interactions) that are responsible for virtuous opinion change in individuals .
Eligibility
Applicants for this position should have a psychology degree.
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