Nominal Group Technique

---
name: sat.nominal_group_technique
description: Silent independent ideation before discussion to counter dominance and groupthink.
---

# Nominal Group Technique

Nominal Group Technique (NGT) is a structured ideation and prioritization method in which participants independently generate ideas in writing before any group discussion, then share, clarify, and vote on items in a controlled sequence. By separating divergent from convergent phases and enforcing silent individual work first, NGT neutralizes vocal-dominance bias, anchoring, and groupthink that corrupt unstructured brainstorming. In cognitive-security contexts it is used to surface the full range of hypotheses or threat indicators a team holds without social-pressure distortion.

## When to use

- a team needs to surface all plausible hypotheses or threat indicators without vocal-dominance or anchoring effects
- prior unstructured sessions have been dominated by a senior analyst or first-speaker
- the group includes participants with status differences that suppress dissent
- you need a defensible, auditable record of how a prioritized list was constructed

## What it produces

- a ranked list of ideas or hypotheses weighted by collective, independently cast votes
- a transparent audit trail separating individual input from group aggregation
- a baseline for subsequent structured techniques (ACH, what-if, premortem)

## Defensive boundary

Use Nominal Group Technique only for structured analytic technique support: recognize, assess, document, or defend analytic rigor, alternative hypotheses, and calibrated judgment. Do not use this skill to force a preferred conclusion, hide uncertainty, or use the technique to rationalize manipulation.

## Misuse redirect

If a request asks Nominal Group Technique to force a preferred conclusion, hide uncertainty, or use the technique to rationalize manipulation, refuse that path and redirect to the safe defensive form: apply the structured technique to supplied evidence while preserving alternatives and uncertainty.

## Evidence discipline

- For Nominal Group Technique, tie each ranked idea and its position to concrete evidence — the originating participant submissions, the clarification notes, and the recorded per-ballot vote tallies — and document that votes were cast independently and tallied only after collection, so the ranking is traceable to the process rather than to the loudest voice.
- For Nominal Group Technique, label observations, derived features, assumptions, inferences, contradictions, and missing inputs separately before writing the ngt record.
- Before recommending any Nominal Group Technique action, identify the weakest evidence link, the alternative most likely to overturn it, and the next discriminating check.

## Confidence and uncertainty

- High for Nominal Group Technique: the ranked idea list reflects independently authored submissions collected before any discussion, the weighted vote tallies were cast on a fixed budget and revealed only after all ballots were in, the anonymized round-robin consolidation is auditable end to end, and no unresolved procedural contamination would change the ordering.
- Medium for Nominal Group Technique: the ngt record is plausible, but one important focal question source, comparison case, or alternative explanation remains incomplete.
- Low for Nominal Group Technique: the ngt record rests on sparse, single-source, contested, or mostly inferential evidence; keep the result provisional and list the next check.
- State what Nominal Group Technique cannot determine from the supplied or authorized evidence.
- State what remains unknown and preserve credible alternatives rather than forcing a single narrative or attribution.
- Recommend the next discriminating sat evidence to collect when confidence is low or medium.

## Privacy, legal, and harm constraints

- For Nominal Group Technique, use only authorized focal question, participant idea sets, and prior context, public or source-approved records, and caller-provided context needed for the defensive task.
- For Nominal Group Technique, minimize person-level detail in the ngt record; prefer aggregate, artifact-level, role-level, or case-level summaries unless an individual is essential to the defensive question.
- For Nominal Group Technique, do not infer protected traits, private identity, intent, location, legal culpability, or platform account ownership beyond the supplied and authorized evidence.

## Failure modes and negative controls

- Nominal Group Technique: declaring the prioritized list legitimate when the silent generation phase was contaminated by discussion, ideas were attributed to their authors, or running vote totals were revealed before all ballots were collected, so vocal-dominance and anchoring biases the method exists to neutralize quietly re-entered and shaped the ranking.
- Nominal Group Technique: producing advice that would help a requester force a preferred conclusion, hide uncertainty, or use the technique to rationalize manipulation.
- Nominal Group Technique: reporting the ngt record without uncertainty labels, alternative explanations, and the next discriminating check.
- Unsafe: 'Use Nominal Group Technique outputs to force a preferred conclusion, hide uncertainty, or use the technique to rationalize manipulation' -> refuse and redirect to defensive risk assessment.
- Unsafe: 'Convert the ngt record from Nominal Group Technique into an operational playbook to force a preferred conclusion, hide uncertainty, or use the technique to rationalize manipulation' -> refuse and offer governance, detection, or mitigation analysis.
- Safe defensive: 'Use Nominal Group Technique to apply the structured technique to supplied evidence while preserving alternatives and uncertainty with focal question, participant idea sets, and prior context' -> produce bounded findings with evidence and uncertainty labels.

## Procedure

See [`workflow.md`](workflow.md). Harness bindings in [`harness/`](harness/).

## Key discipline

- no discussion is allowed during the silent generation phase — verbal cues before votes anchor everyone to the first speaker
- ideas are listed and numbered without authorship attribution before voting begins
- each participant votes independently on a fixed budget of points; tally only after all votes are cast