Delibrative methodology

The methodology of the deliberative workshop: This qualitative approach involves bringing together a broadly representative group of people for a day of discussion on a particular topic. There is time to explore people's attitudes and beliefs and then provide them with information and arguments to reach an informed position. We plan to hold two such events in different parts of the country.


The deliberative methodology has its roots in James Fishkin's pioneering work on Deliberative Polls and recent experiments with Citizen's Juries (see Fishkin, 1995). The deliberative methodology has advantages over traditional quantitative surveys or focus group discussions. Participants are allowed the time to get to grips with the details of a particular issue, in e.g. researching wealth distribution ın the case of inheritance tax, rather than simply offering their unreflective, and often uninformed, beliefs. The development of an informed opinion over the course of a day shows whether and how views change and what arguments and information have most impact. The deliberative workshop also provides a forum for participants to be challenged by each other. Participants from different backgrounds and with different initial views discuss a common topic together. They are encouraged to develop their arguments in a focused way to reach an informed position.

The questions the deliberative workshops will address

We will use the deliberative workshops to explore the following basic questions:

What are people's initial views of inheritance and inheritance tax?
What are people's initial notions of fairness in this area?
How (if at all) do views change when people are presented with relevant facts about wealth distribution, inheritance and inheritance tax?
How (if at all) do views change when arguments, from different sides of the inheritance tax debate, are presented?
In addition, we aim to use the workshops to explore some more policy-specific questions:

On informed reflection, do people's views of inheritance tax differ according to whether the tax falls on donors (an estates tax) or on recipients (a capital receipts tax)?
On informed reflection, do people's views about inheritance tax differ according to whether the tax is explicitly linked to a policy of stakeholder grants (or to other equal opportunity-promoting policies such as publicly-funded child centres)?

Source: Public Policy Unit, Oxford Univ.,
http://government.politics.ox.ac.uk/Projects/New%20Politics%20of%20Ownership.asp