Delphi method: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 23:36, 17 July 2004

Revision as of 21:26, 14 February 2005

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Later the Delphi method was applied in other areas, especially those related to public policy issues, such as economic trends, health and education. It was also applied successfully and with high accuracy in business forecasting. For example in one case reported by Basu and Schroeder (1977) Delphi method predicted the sales of a new product during the first two years with accuracy of 3–4% compared with actual sales. Quantitative methods produced errors of 10–15% and traditional unstructured forecast methods of about 20%.

But overall the track record of the Delphi method is mixed. There have been many cases when the method produced poor results. Still, some authors contributeattribute this to poor application of the method and not to the weaknesses of the method itself. It must also be realised that in areas such as science and technology forecasting the degree of uncertainty is so great that exact and always correct predictions are impossible, so a high degree of error is to be expected.

Another particular weakness of the Delphi method is that future developments are not always predicted correctly by iterative consensus of experts, but instead by unconventional thinking of amateur outsiders.