Sunday, October 28, 2012

NGT versus Delphi method

The NGT is a research tool that was originally developed by by Delbecq et al in 1971 to gather consensus on planning activities within organizations and help in prioritizing those activities. One of the characteristics of the NGT method is that it’s an iterative process that enables group participation and feedback about specific issues. It helps gather feedback from groups of 5 to 10 participants within a short period of time. It also allows individual participants to voice their opinions and ideas about issues thus preventing the discussion to be dominated by a single participant. The other characteristic or benefit of this research tool is that it allows individual group members to present their own judgments and make group members feel the value of their viewpoints and input. This in turn, can also encourage even the shyest members to provide input and feedback without being constrained with a prescribed thought from the researcher or moderator. Another characteristic of this technique is that it can produce a large number of thoughts or answers in a very timely manner which could ultimately help meet the research objective or purpose. 

The Delphi method was developed in the 1950’s with the aim of gathering opinions and feedback to reach consensus on a research topic. This research technique best fits research topics where future predictions or forecasting is required. It aims at collecting expert knowledge and thoughts from subject matter experts in a domain and uses that knowledge to reach a consensus on the underlying research topic. The other characteristic of this research method is that it attempts to answer questions about what could or should happen in a field within a time frame so that a future prediction or forecast can be made. 
The main different between the two research methods is that the NGT can generate results and consensus with a short time period such as an hour or two hours whereas the Delphi technique can take days to solicit input and ideas of participants. And because of this time frame difference, the NGT can be used as an effective real time research tool to determine a future trend or prediction within a short time frame whereas the Delphi technique needs much more time to gather the opinions and feedback of experts of pressing research issues and use that knowledge to make decisions about future trends and forecasts. 

One force that could affect the success of those methods is the ethical aspect of group participation. How sincere are the participants when they provide input and feedback can impact the quality of the results obtained from either technique. The other force is the technology force; which technology do we use to gather expert opinion of research topics. Are we using surveys, face-to-face interviews of e-mail communication to communicate with participants? If we use face to face interviews, then we may get more candid answers and solutions of the underlying research issues. 


references
http://www.stfm.org/fmhub/fm2004/June/Alison402.pdf
VargaAtkins,T;withBunyan,N.;McIsaac,J;Fewtrell,R(2011)Usingthenominalgrouptechniquewithclickerstoresearchstudentexperiencesofe learning:aprojectreport.WrittenfortheELESIGSmallGrantsScheme.Liverpool:UniversityofLiverpoo

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