Some facilitators will encourage the sharing and discussion of reasons for the choices made by each group member, thereby identifying common ground and a plurality of ideas and approaches.
This technique was originally developed by Andre Delbecq and Andrew H. Van de Ven,[1][3] and has been applied to adult education program planning by Vedros,[4] and has also been employed as a useful technique in curriculum design and evaluation in educational institutions.
[11] These findings are consistent with a 1958 study[12] which found that, in response to three different problems requiring creative thinking, the number of ideas produced by "nominal groups" (whose members were actually working alone) was greater than the number of ideas produced by real, face-to-face groups.
The nominal group technique is particularly useful:[citation needed] Routinely, the NGT involves five stages: The number of nominal group meetings to be held will depend on the nature of the question and accessibility to the key stakeholders best suited to help address the problem.
Other advantages include producing a large number of ideas and providing a sense of closure that is often not found in less-structured group methods.
[citation needed] A major disadvantage of NGT is that the method lacks flexibility by being able to deal with only one problem at a time.
It is a method to work with a collection of people and involve them in decision making but does not depend on existing group processes.
Modification of NGT, undertaken by Bartunek and Murnighan,[14] helps to deal with ill-structured problems.
Regular breaks are taken by the participants to ensure that the group feels they are still working on the original problem.