Assignment 5: Group Decision-making using the DELPHI method Note: Please do make sure that you appropriately cite any re

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Assignment 5: Group Decision-making using the DELPHI
method
Note: Please do make sure that you appropriately
cite any reference material, using Harvard Referencing style and
ensure that you draw from quality academic sources. On this note,
remember that general internet sources such as Wikipedia and
Investopedia are not recognised academic sources.
[Number of words guide: approximately 700 – 900
words]
As discussed, DELPHI is a widely used research method for
deriving consensus among a group of individuals having expertise on
a particular topic. It is a structured group decision-making
process where, through iterative feedback, the opinions of a panel
of experts are elicited and consensus is reached.
In this mini assignment, you are required to develop a mini
proposal to apply the DELPHI method to a problem/issue of your
choice. First, think of a problem/issue (preferably from your
industry or field of study) that may lend itself for investigation
by the DELPHI approach (you will need to do some general
reading to inform your thinking here). Then, following the
example of Keil et al (2013), structure your writing as follows:
(a) provide a brief background to the problem/issue; (b) explain
why the problem/issue is important; (c) explain what
data/information is required to help address the problem/issue and
why you think the data/information is currently unavailable or of
limited availability to justify conducting a DELPHI research study
(needless to say, there is little or no need of doing research
if the information required to address a problem/issue is already
available); (d) explain why DELPHI method is the most
appropriate method to provide the required data/information
(here, read about when to use DELPHI or the circumstances under
which DELPHI is appropriate); (e) finally, outline some
research questions (about 2 – 3 research questions) that will be
addressed by your DELPHI study.
Then briefly describe how your DELPHI study will be implemented.
Here, structure your writing as follows; (a) describe how you will
select the experts for the study and suggest/justify how many
experts you think will be appropriate (here, refer to
procedures for selecting experts in Okoli et al 2004); (b)
describe the type of data that you will collect (e.g. rankings or
ratings) and how the data will be collected
(here, refer to Keil et al., 2013; in particular, develop a
chart summarising the process of your data collection similar to
Figure 1 in Keil et al., 2013); (c) state the methods that you
will use to analyse the data; (d) finally, briefly explain how the
results from your data analysis will answer the identified research
questions and how they will ultimately address the problem/issue
identified at the beginning of the study.
Note: Structure your narrative in a continuous
prose (no bullet points or outline numbers e.g. a, b, c etc).
Reference (available from the reading list on
blackboard)
Keil, M., Lee, H., Deng, T. (2013), Understanding the most
critical skills for managing IT projects: A Delphi study of IT
project managers, Information & Management, 50: 398 –
414
Okoli, C. and Pawlowski, S. D. (2004) The Delphi method as a
research tool: an example, design considerations and applications.
Information and Management, 42(1):15-29.