What is Delphi Studio?
Delphi Studio is a research-grade platform for modified Delphi and consensus research. It lets a research team design, run, analyze, audit, and report consensus studies from one place — with the methodological rigor required for peer-reviewed publication.
Traditional Delphi studies are stitched together from survey tools, spreadsheets, and email threads. That makes them slow to run and hard to defend: round-over-round statistics are recomputed by hand, anonymity is fragile, and the audit trail a reviewer or IRB asks for simply doesn't exist. Delphi Studio replaces that workflow with a single governed system.
What you get
| Capability | Detail |
|---|---|
| Authoritative study record | Server-validated revisions, study-scoped authorization, transactional workflow changes, and a clearly non-authoritative browser cache |
| Defensible by design | Median, IQR, MAD, Kendall's W, RAND/UCLA DI, optional cross-stakeholder rules — with frozen consensus rules per round |
| Complete audit trail | Hash-chained system log of edits, ratings, AI runs, and rule changes; researcher study-event timeline; derived re-analysis without rewriting history |
| Frictionless panelists | Magic-link access; pseudonymized identities encrypted at rest; unable-to-rate and optional statement proposals |
| Manuscript-ready outputs | Final-report DOCX, CREDES-aligned methods section (Markdown), consensus tables, REFI-QDA, checksummed trace bundle |
| Review-gated AI assistance | Inductive themes, deductive coding, feedback summaries, manuscript sections, and statement lint — every AI run passes a pending → approved review gate before its output reaches panelists or reports |
Who it's for
Delphi Studio is built for teams that need their consensus process to hold up under scrutiny:
- Clinical guideline groups
- Medical education researchers
- Healthcare consensus panels
- Policy and governance working groups
- Research consortia
How documentation is organized
| Section | Start here if you want to… |
|---|---|
| Getting started | Launch your first study in 30 minutes |
| Methodology | Learn Delphi theory and choose a preset |
| Concepts | Understand studies, panels, rounds, ratings |
| Using the platform | Run the wizard, recruit, open rounds, collaborate |
| Analytics | Read statistics, re-analysis, and stopping signals |
| Reporting | Export CREDES, trace bundle, REFI-QDA |
| Worked examples | Follow end-to-end scenarios |
Study structure
Delphi Studio organizes studies around panels, item banks, iterative rounds, controlled feedback, and frozen methodology rules — the methodological structure researchers need for defensible consensus work. Supporting governance features include an organization-wide expert directory, reusable study templates, multi-layer ratings, withdrawal handling with an explicit data-disposition choice and re-consent gating after protocol amendments, and email deliverability and suppression tracking.
See Structure for how these components fit together.
Next steps
- Quickstart — create and launch a study, with a full video walkthrough
- What is the Delphi method? — theory and method types
- Study design wizard — the canonical 11-step setup sequence
- Governed study record — authority, access, uploads, imports, and audited transitions
- Collaboration & roles — invite co-investigators and analysts
This documentation describes the Delphi Studio platform. To run a study, visit delphistudio.org.