Deliberative Polling®

A Deliberative Poll® starts by interviewing a scientific random sample. This much is like an ordinary poll, but this is where an ordinary poll stops and where a Deliberative Poll begins.

Once interviewed, the sample members are invited to a common site to discuss the issues, for anywhere from a single day to a long weekend. They are sent carefully balanced briefing materials laying out the arguments for and against the major alternatives. On site, they discuss the issues in randomly assigned small groups, led by trained moderators, and ask questions of carefully balanced panels of policy experts and often policy makers.

And at the end they answer the same questions as at the beginning. The process thus shows both the participants’ more considered opinions and how they may differ from the opinions they started with (what ordinary polls would measure).

Past Deliberative Polling results show that many people change their views after learning, thinking, and talking about the issues. Sometimes these changes cancel out, with some people moving in one direction, and others moving, in roughly equal degree, in the other direction. But much more often they do not. In most cases, considered opinions, on the whole, differ from unconsidered ones.

Statistical analysis can suggest some of the facts, perceptions, and arguments that may have produced the changes.