A Guide to Nominal Group Technique (NGT) in Focus-group Research

Abstract

This article briefly describes the use of Nominal Group Technique (NGT) to elicit information from a small group. NGT is a simple and rigorous educational research method, which can easily be used with staff and/or students. In this article, the different stages of NGT are covered sequentially and a short case study is provided on the use of NGT in a recent geography and environmental sciences pedagogic research project. This short paper also considers the appropriate use of NGT and covers some of the technique's weaknesses. The article concludes by providing some recommendations for practitioners who might like to try using this technique.