The Simulated Group Response Paradigm: A new approach to the study of opinion change in Delphi and other structured-group techniques

Groups provide several benefits over individuals for judgment and decision making, but they suffer from problems too. Structured-group techniques, like Delphi, use strictly controlled information exchange between individuals to retain positive aspects of group interaction, while ameliorating negative. These methods regularly use ‘nominal’ groups that interact in a remote, distributed, and often anonymous manner, thus lending themselves to internet applications, with a consequent recent increase in popularity. However, evidence for the utility of the techniques is scant, major reasons for which being difficulties maintaining experimental control and logistical problems in recruiting sufficient empirical ‘groups’ to produce statistically meaningful results. As a solution, we present the Simulated Group Response Paradigm, where individual responses are first elicited in a pre-study – or created by the experimenter – then subsequently fed back to highly-controlled simulated groups. This paradigm facilitates investigation of factors leading to virtuous opinion change in groups, and subsequent development of structured-group techniques.