Taking part in the open Delphi study

Participation (Pronoia)

Metodix always has one open Delphi study running, and anyone interested in the topic can ask for an invitation. This guide tells you in two minutes what you are joining. Answering itself takes about fifteen minutes.

No account needed

A personal link arrived in your email, and that is all you need. There is no password and nothing to register. The same link brings you back to the panel round after round, so keep the message.

Please don't pass the link on. It is your seat in the panel, and if someone else answers with it, their views are recorded as yours.

A Delphi study is not a survey

A survey adds opinions up. A Delphi study reads them. A round goes like this:

1. You answer first. You rate the theses before you see what anyone else said. The order is deliberate: the first number you saw would stick to your own.
2. You give your reasoning. The reasoning is the most important part of your answer. The rating says where you landed; the reasoning says why, and that is what the analysis reads.
3. You read the others' reasoning. Under OTHERS' REASONING you see the rest of the panel anonymously. You can comment on a single piece of reasoning and ask its author for more.
4. You may revise. If some argument makes you think differently, change your answer and say what changed it. Changing your mind is not weakness but a result of the method, and it appears in the analysis as a finding of its own.

The aim is not unanimity. The aim is that those who disagree know why they disagree.

Anonymity is structural, not a promise

The other panelists see only a pseudonym. They see your rating and your reasoning; your name, your organisation and your email address stay out of sight. This is not politeness but a condition of the method: anonymous reasoning is judged by its content rather than by its author's standing.

In the distribution chart your own answer is marked you, and in the discussion your own turns appear to you as You. To everyone else the same row sits under a pseudonym.

Only the organisers at Metodix see your contact details, and they use them solely to send the invitation and the round messages.

What else is on the page

• DISCUSSION gathers the conversation around a thesis into a thread, and YOUR REASONING shows your own text, which you can refine.
• More services shows what has been stored about you, and it is also where you can withdraw from the study.
• Weak signals & wild cards is a place for observations that do not fit the theses but may still change the picture of what is coming.

If something doesn't work

Open Share an observation and write down what you tried and what happened. The message goes to the people who build Pronoia, not to the study's facilitator, and it has no effect on your answers. The most useful thing you can tell us is where you looked first — even if it was the wrong place.

Short answers