Participation level:

High (Stakeholders participate in decision)

Innovation level:

High (Innovative)

Facilitator skill level, and other support required:

High (Specialist skills)

Can be used for:

Engage community
Develop community capacity
Develop action plan
Communicate an issue
Build alliances, consensus

Nominal Group technique aims to increase participation in problem identification, problem solving and program planning, and to make sure that participants represent a balance of the range of opinions available within a community or group.

Nominal Group technique facilitates creative problem solving and delivers group decisions that incorporate individual judgments with greater accuracy.

Highly effective workshop activity
Ensures input from all participants
Elicits a wide range of responses
Useful for determining democratically derived outcomes
Useful for fact-finding, idea generation, or solutions.

Good facilitators are required.
Rules need to be clear at outset.
The wording of questions must be unambiguous and clear.
Not for routine business, bargaining, predetermined outcome, or groups requiring consensus.
Can be difficult to convince people to use Nominal Groups for the first time.
Explanations help to overcome this resistance, but a successful experience helps much more.
Trying out the process on an issue that can be covered completely in one
early experiences using Nominal Groups, people find it difficult to keep from discussing issues before all points are listed, clarified, and prioritised. So, the facilitator must prevent discussion from starting too soon.

Organizing Nominal Group

How many people to organize?

Large (> 12 people)
Medium (2-12 people)

Time required:

Medium (6 weeks-6 months)

Cost:

Medium (AUD$1,000-AUD$10,000)

Advertise group meeting of 3 to 4 hours.
Select participants to ensure a mix of interests/community groups/social levels/age/gender, etcetera.
Hire facilitator skilled in nominal group meeting process. Success of the process depends on thorough preparation by the facilitator.
Leaders should clarify the questions to be asked, considering what key information they need. Pretest the question before the meeting. Remember, global questions stimulate global answers. Emotional (likes/dislikes, etc.) information must be asked for directly.
For larger groups, organise into subgroups (seven to nine people) on the same or different topics, depending on the range of issues.
The facilitator should follow the full step-by-step process, which can include the silent generation and balloting of ideas used strategically in a wide variety of situations and taking relatively little time, eg, for quick agenda setting.
Choose from the following steps, and follow the process (see: http://128.143.238.20/services/CSA/nominal.htm for detailed instructions):

Silent generation of ideas in writing (10 - 20 minutes)
Recorded round-robin listing of ideas on chart (20 - 40 minutes).
A very brief discussion and clarification of each idea on the chart (20 - 40 minutes).
Preliminary vote on priorities: silent, independent (10 minutes).
Meeting break
Discussion of the preliminary vote (20-40 minutes).
Final vote on priorities: silent independent (10 minutes).
Listing and agreement on prioritized items.