Delphi Studio Team

If your methods section is written from memory, the study record is already doing too little.

Much of the methodological risk in a Delphi study sits in the interval between closing one round and opening the next.

Delphi panels are usually purposive constructions rather than probability samples—which makes their justification more important, not less.

A threshold chosen after Round 1 is not a threshold. It is a result.

Four design features separate a defensible Delphi from a survey with extra steps.

Modified Delphi studies are a cornerstone of expert consensus in clinical guidelines, medical education, health policy, and quality improvement. When conducted rigorously, they produce transparent, reproducible, and defensible recommendations. However, most Delphi studies are still coordinated through fragmented tools — survey platforms, spreadsheets, email chains, and manual analysis. This approach creates unnecessary administrative burden and, more importantly, makes it difficult to demonstrate exactly how consensus was reached when questioned by journal reviewers, IRBs, or replication teams.