Building Consensus

This webinar will combine an educational session and a case study to illustrate key aspects of the modified Delphi process and highlight practical results. The Delphi Process was pioneered by the RAND Corporation in the 1950’s and 1960’s. It is used to collect, distill, and reach prioritized consensus around creative ideas and/or sensitive qualitative issues and questions. The process is also an effective tool when working with influential or highly opinionated participants. The Delphi method uses an iterative approach with three rounds of inquiry – combining quantitative and qualitative aspects. Four key features are described below: · Anonymity early in the Delphi process allows the participants to freely and impartially express their opinions without concerns about swaying others’ opinions or impacting prior bodies of work. · The iterative process allows the participants to refine their views in light of insight from other panel members from the previous round. · Controlled feedback informs Delphi panel members of the other participants’ perspectives and provides the opportunity to clarify or change their views in a way that preserves impartiality. · Statistical aggregation of group responses based on the rank-order prioritization allows for a quantitative analysis and interpretation of data. A case study will also be presented in which a modified Delphi process was successfully used with many of the world’s leading physicians to prioritize cancer research funding initiatives.