Delphi consultation

Launched in July 2021, the Delphi consultation is a qualitative technique used to arrive at a group opinion by surveying a panel of experts, who respond to several rounds of questionnaires. The responses are aggregated and shared with the group after each round, and the ultimate result is meant to be a consensus of what the group thinks about a specific topic.

The purpose of this exercise is to validate the results of the previous MESOC activities and to provide direction for the activities to follow, based on large consensual feedback. Indeed, the contents of the three questionnaires are the results of the previous research activities and have been nurtured by a twofold approach: a “top-down” approach, based on expert knowledge and extensive literature analysis on the topic; and a “bottom-up” approach, grounded on the experiences collected in the City Pilots, that provide concrete evidence from cultural projects and policies in different cities around Europe. In order to ensure the quality and coherence of the exercise, the contents have passed an internal revision process with the consortium members and an external revision process with the External Advisory Board members.

Regarding the typologies of participants, the selected invited experts are representative of four groups that play an important role in the researched field:

• Academics and consultants;
• Public administration and policymakers;
• Private foundations supporting cultural projects aiming at social impact;
• Directors / managers of cultural projects.

The first questionnaire of this three-step consultation is aimed at exploring the typologies of social impacts, the transformative effects of cultural experiences by functions and typologies of cultural projects, the elements of local context that affect the impact generation process, and at sharing a first set of conceptual reflections on the topic. The results of this first questionnaire were validated in the second survey, which has been launched in February 2022 and allowed to go more in-depth in the topics of social impact evaluation and typologies of variables to detect transformational changes in cultural projects and policies.

Finally, the results of the first and second surveys were explored by a group of experts during a two-day workshop held in Athens in May 2022.

The conclusive results were officially presented during the MESOC Final Conference in March 2023.

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Figure: MESOC Delphi consultation process. Elaborated by the University of Barcelona research team of the MESOC project