Increasing Political Sophistication Through Public Deliberation

Deliberative democratic theory posits that group deliberation aids the development of citizens' political sophistication. To test this general claim, the authors studied the association between participation in face-to-face political deliberation and subsequent changes in the coherence, integration, differentiation, and detail of participants' political beliefs. The authors measured these dependent variables using questionnaires administered before and after participation in a deliberative activity-National Issues Forums (NIF) discussions of political issues. Seven different issues were studied, and the results of these separate studies were integrated through meta-analysis. Changes in preforum and postformum responses suggested that participation in the NIF discussions increased participants' schematic integration and differentiation and reduced their attitudinal uncertainty.

[1]  Dennis Davis,et al.  Democracy and deliberation , 1999 .

[2]  A Furedi,et al.  Hard choices. , 1999, Conscience.

[3]  W. Barnett Pearce,et al.  Moral Conflict: When Social Worlds Collide , 1997 .

[4]  Duane T. Wegener,et al.  Attitudes and attitude change. , 1997, Annual review of psychology.

[5]  Edward E. Smith,et al.  A disconfirmation bias in the evaluation of arguments. , 1996 .

[6]  Daniel M. Merkle.  THE POLLS—REVIEWTHE NATIONAL ISSUES CONVENTION DELIBERATIVE POLL , 1996 .

[7]  James S. Fishkin,et al.  The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy , 1995 .

[8]  Fishkin and the deliberative opinion poll: Lessons from a study of the Granada 500 television program , 1995 .

[9]  D. Rucinski.  The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. , 1994 .

[10]  John Gastil,et al.  Democracy in Small Groups: Participation, Decision Making, and Communication , 1993 .

[11]  John Mueller.  Democracy and Ralph's Pretty Good Grocery: Elections, Equality, and Minimal Human Being , 1992 .

[12]  K. Melville,et al.  Criminal Violence: What Direction Now for the War on Crime? , 1992 .

[13]  N. Day,et al.  Political participation and democracy in Britain , 1992 .

[14]  Judith A. Hall,et al.  Testing for moderator variables in meta‐analysis: Issues and methods , 1991 .

[15]  Seymour Sudman,et al.  Coming to public judgment , 1991 .

[16]  Robert C. Luskin.  Explaining political sophistication , 1990 .

[17]  Jon A. Krosnick,et al.  Psychological determinants of political opinionation , 1990 .

[18]  S. Peterson.  Political Behavior: Patterns in Everyday Life , 1990 .

[19]  P. Lachenbruch.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences (2nd ed.) , 1989 .

[20]  John E. Hunter,et al.  Methods of Meta-Analysis , 1989 .

[21]  Tom Carney,et al.  A Handbook for the Study of Human Communication: Methods and instruments for observing, measuring and assessing communication processes , 1988 .

[22]  Robert C. Luskin.  Measuring Political Sophistication , 1987 .

[23]  F. Christopher Arterton,et al.  Teledemocracy: Can Technology Protect Democracy? F. Christopher Arterton. 1987. Sage, Newbury Park, CA. 222 pages. Index. ISBN: 0-8039-2872-6 , 1988 .

[24]  A. Bandura.  The Explanatory and Predictive Scope of Self-Efficacy Theory , 1986 .

[25]  A. Bandura.  Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory , 1985 .

[26]  Benjamin R. Barber,et al.  Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age , 1985 .

[27]  P. J. Conover,et al.  How People Organize the Political World: A Schematic Model , 1984 .

[28]  F. Kerlinger.  Liberalism and conservatism , 1984 .

[29]  R. Rosenthal.  Meta-analytic procedures for social research , 1984 .

[30]  W. Russell Neuman,et al.  Differentiation and Integration: Two Dimensions of Political Thinking , 1981, American Journal of Sociology.

[31]  Shirley Williams.  Politics is for people , 1981 .

[32]  Jacob Cohen,et al.  Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences , 1979 .

[33]  G. Marcus,et al.  Political competence and ideological constraint , 1975 .

[34]  N. Nie,et al.  PSR volume 66 issue 3 Cover and Front matter , 1972, American Political Science Review.

[35]  S. Verba,et al.  The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations , 1964 .

[36]  M. Sherif,et al.  The psychology of attitudes. , 1946, Psychological review.