Questions & Rating Design

The quality of your questions determines the clarity and usefulness of your results. Vague statements or inconsistent rating scales make it hard for experts to provide meaningful input — this step is where your study's scientific value is built.

Step 2: Design Your Delphi Questions and Rating Dimensions

Organize Survey Pages

Organize your survey into logical sections or topics. This helps experts navigate complex studies and keeps related questions together. You can create, duplicate, or delete pages at any time.

Best Practices

• Group related theses into themed pages
• Use page duplications to maintain consistent formatting
• Avoid having too many theses on one page (max 10–15)
• Use clear page titles that describe the topic

State Your Theses or Questions

Each statement should be specific, relevant, and neutral in tone to avoid bias.

Good Example:

"Artificial intelligence will be the main diagnostic tool in public health by 2035."

Poor Example:

"Don't you think AI might somehow change healthcare?" — too vague, leading, and lacks a timeframe.

Define Rating Dimensions

Decide how you want experts to rate each thesis. Common options include:

Likert Scales

1–5 or 1–7 agreement scales

Example: 1 = Strongly Disagree, 5 = Strongly Agree

Time Expectations

Year-based predictions

Example: "In which year do you expect this to happen?"

Probability Estimates

0–100% likelihood scales

Example: "What is the probability this will occur?"

Importance Ratings

1–10 priority scales

Example: "How important is this factor?"

Configure Comments and Additional Inputs

Enable rich expert interaction beyond numerical ratings. Durvey.org provides powerful commenting features that capture nuanced expert reasoning and facilitate engagement.

Pro/Contra Comments

Experts can add comments tagged with sentiment (pro or contra). This helps identify why experts support or oppose specific theses and provides context for ratings.

Like and Interact

Experts can "like" other comments to show agreement, creating a lightweight way to express support for particular viewpoints without writing duplicate comments.

Explanation Fields

Ask experts to justify their ratings. This qualitative data enriches your analysis and helps other participants understand different perspectives.

Research Benefit: These interactive features generate rich qualitative data alongside quantitative consensus metrics. Your final analysis will include both statistical agreement and deep expert insights.