Delphi Interview

[Kayleigh Telega]

Inthe July blog we covered in-depth interviews, now I want to explore a structured form of research, known as Delphi. The purpose of the Delphi methods is to generate expert consensus in the formation of estimates and forecasts in operational planning and decision making.

I'm going to tell you up front that is is not the latest thing in methods, but neither is it a fading fashion. It is a technique first developed in the mid-twentieth century, by the US RAND Corporation in the 1950s, (Dalkey & Helmer, 1962) to forecast the effects of warfare on technology; initially for expert informed operational estimates of numbers of bombs needed to destroy targets. However, Delphi has had many fields of application including health, public policy, social equity, business and law, and education. To assess if it is a fading fashion, I needed a way to gauge the use of Delphi over this time. All research outputs have increased over time, so I compared search results for Delphi and a comparator qualitative method, Research focus group method.

This crude count of Google Scholar search results (Chart 1) indicates that the count for both methods has increased, but while focus group method increased around the turn of this century, much more than it did for Delphi.

Top results in Google Scholar for Research Delphi Method in 2023 come from diverse areas including clinical, psychology/psychiatry, dentistry, maritime accident investigation, blast analysis, supply-chain management, medical and health education, sustainability, applied linguistics, and supply chain logistics. Bear in mind however that this is not a review of the literature, just counts of results from a Google algorithm.

It seems from these illustrative results that Delphi has always been less favoured in qualitative circles than focus group method and its growth in use has not increased as much as focus groups. This is unsurprising to me as it is a very particular method used for particular purposes, and as such, lacks the greater flexibility of a more general approach like focus groups. Delphi interviews will always be structured, but focus group interviews have evolved to be structured and semi-structured, almost to the point of having no structure in some creative and participatory approaches. But am I being a bit biased here?

Newer studies have a wider remit i.e. the goal is broadly understanding consensus within a topic. RAND Corporation researchers continue to adapt and develop the technique in their research. If you are a student of security, international politics or related public policy, you will almost certainly have heard of them, but they also research in areas in which the Delphi method continues to be used (e.g. Education, Health and Medicine, Environment, Workforce and Infrastructure, and Law) with such purposes as supplementing climate modelling, hypothesis generation, stakeholder perspectives, priority-setting, and facilitating engagement in citizen science. According to Hirschhorn (2019), Delphi can produce a breadth of views that makes it almost unparalleled as a building block for continued and more in-depth analysis than workshops, interviews or case studies alone.

Not only have more creative and inclusive ways to ensure inputs been developed, but adaptations that would seem to challenge the generally described 'core elements' of anonymity and the use of statistics to aggregate responses. These variants adapt the method in different ways, such as techniques to select participants, types of questions employed, quasi-anonymity of the experts, qualitative tools used for the analysis of responses, and differences in the type of outcome sought e.g. perspectives not consensus. At the other end of a perceived ontological spectrum approaches that prioritise statistical validity remain commonplace. Robust statistical forms such Fuzzy Delphi and Large-Scale Group Delphi Method (LSGDM) are also emerging.

Where data is numerical or scaler in nature and definitions of consensus are defined with reference to descriptive and inferential statistics (such as mean and median values, and standard deviations), one wonders if Delphi could ever be used qualitatively. However, not all Delphi studies will gather numerical data (mini-Delphi). Methods may also be quasi-anonymous where face-to-face gatherings are used to facilitate the exploration of difference in expert or participant opinion. Delphi method is just that; a method; a tool of process to facilitate analysis. Given the potential to mix numerical data with text data, and to mix the contextualised knowledge from the subjective positions of different specific informants with statistical analysis, I think Delphi qualifies as a mixed-method approach.

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Background: A quarter of the United Kingdom's population are living with obesity, a disease that causes an estimated 30 000 deaths each year. This coincides with an under-utilisation of weight management services across the country with the majority of patients with morbid obesity having no record of any weight loss intervention at all. This study explores the factors that influence patient access to weight management services.

Methodology: Expert opinion was obtained using semi-structured interviews and the Delphi methodology. Participants were selected from primary and secondary healthcare settings. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) had experience working in weight management services or in services dealing with obesity-related comorbidities. Patients had experience in attending a variety weight management services.

Results: Nineteen participants completed all aspects of the study. The main barriers included negative perceptions, low mood/depression, obesity not being considered as a serious disease, lack of access to services for housebound patients and disproportionate commissioning. Suggested facilitating factors to improve access included the education of all HCPs about obesity, improving HCP communication with patients, and broadening the number of HCP's that are able to refer to weight management services.

Conclusions: Future services must prioritise the education of all HCPs and the public to combat the stigma of obesity and its impact on health. National commissioning guidelines in partnership with advocates of obesity should seek to streamline referral pathways, broaden referral sources and increase the availability of specialist services. Awareness of these factors when designing future weight management services will help to improve their utilisation.

New details have come to light in the unsolved Delphi, Indiana, double murder investigation with the publication of a police interview with a man who, according to transcripts, admitted to communicating with 14-year-old victim Libby German.

Indiana State Police said that, while investigating the case in December 2021, they \"uncovered\" a fake Snapchat and Instagram profile called \"anthony_shots,\" where the unknown user misappropriated photos of a known male model for his own profile image and communicated with underage girls \"to solicit nude images, obtain their addresses, and attempt to meet them.\"

New information on the \"anthony_shots\" account is now public thanks to the true crime podcast Murder Sheet, which obtained a transcript of a police interview with 27-year-old Kegan Kline, an Indiana man arrested in 2020 and charged with possession of child pornography and related charges. Murder Sheet found the transcript while looking through documents associated with Kline's criminal case online; this interview transcript was mistakenly published online and later taken down.

Police said Kline's device logged into the \"anthony_shots\" Snapchat account the day that the girls were killed. Police also accused Kline of communicating with Libby on the day she was killed, according to the transcript.

Police said the \"anthony_shots\" account told someone online about Libby: \"I was supposed to meet that girl, but she never showed up.\" But Kline said in the interview he never would have met with Libby in person.

One of the co-hosts of the Murder Sheet podcast, attorney Kevin Greenlee, told ABC News that another part of the police transcript that stood out to him was how \"police reveal that, in studying the messages sent from the 'anthony_shots' account, they see differences in languages and phrasing choices that make it apparent to them that at least two different people were accessing that account and using it to send messages to underage girls.\"

Greenlee told ABC News, \"At one point in the interrogation, the police officer ... tells Kegan Kline, 'We do not believe you are the one that committed these murders.' But then they point out that Kegan Kline had taken a polygraph test where he was asked: 'Do you know who committed these murders?' And the police say he failed that exam. So what does Kegan Kline know?\"

\"We are aware 'The Murder Sheet' has released a transcript,\" state police said in a statement to ABC News Tuesday. \"The information that was released did not come from the Indiana State Police nor The Delphi Double Homicide Task Force. This is still an ongoing investigation.\"

In 2017, authorities released a grainy image of the suspect, who they say was on the trail the day the girls went missing. In 2019, police released a brief video clip -- footage taken from Libby's phone -- showing a grainy image of the suspect walking on the bridge near where the girls were last seen.

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