We continually see the transformative effect of deliberative engagement firsthand. Now, thanks to two years of research and the responses of 314 deliberative process participants, we can begin to quantify this impact.
MosaicLab’s Deliberation and Democratic Trust Report: Measuring participant change across 10 Victorian councils captures the responses to pre- and post-deliberation surveys completed by community panel participants in 2020 and 2021. The report highlights what’s possible when communities are given real influence over big decisions.
The surveys were collected to evaluate the impact of 10 deliberative engagement processes conducted by nine councils. MosaicLab supported each organisation to elevate their community engagement processes, incorporate key democratic principles and offer higher levels of influence in their communities. Read the case study: 11 transformative council deliberations.
Participants in these processes – everyday people, randomly selected and descriptively representative – were surveyed twice, at the start and end of each process. The results reveal remarkable changes in before-and-after attitudes, including:
Download the free publication
Deliberation and Democratic Trust Report:
Measuring participant change across 10 Victorian councils
SETTING A ‘BENCHMARK’
The report findings help quantify the value of deliberative engagement processes and their ability to:
“MosaicLab has set the benchmark for sound community engagement.”
significantly increase trust in democratic institutions
build supported decisions
encourage involvement in civic affairs
give everyday people genuine belief in their influence on issues that affect them.
newDemocracy foundation research director Dr Lyn Carson reflected on the significance of the report.
“It is quite unusual to have such a valuable dataset,” she said. “Ten deliberative processes across nine councils in a single Australian state, with most being conducted entirely online, by the same practitioners.
“Using a democratic lottery, more than 300 participants were able to devise various community plans after considerable time, learning and deep discussion.
“The methodology alone is impressive enough.
“The participants’ reactions are even more heartening.
“Increased trust in democratic institutions, genuine influence in matters that affect them. These are not the views of the organisations or their representatives, but those of everyday people.
“MosaicLab has set the benchmark for sound community engagement.”
REPORT HIGHLIGHTS
The Deliberation and Democratic Trust Report features:
“spotlights” on four council community vision panels
videos showing how council community visions were created
comparison tables showing pre- and post-deliberation survey data
direct feedback from community panellists
detailed appendix with an overview of participant demographics from each council area.
BIGGER AND BETTER DATA COMING SOON
MosaicLab is committed to evaluating and measuring the impact of deliberative practice. We survey deliberative process participants as part of our standard approach.
We believe in the power of deliberative engagement done right and we want to build our knowledge and use this data to continually improve our practice. We also intend to share these learnings more broadly, because we are passionate about enhancing deliberative practice across the world.
Right now, we are busy assembling an expanded report which will build significantly on this initial work. Our next report will compare results from participant surveys across a large number of projects dating all the way back to 2017.
It will similarly track attitudes towards trust, confidence and belief in democratic processes; but it will paint a much richer, bigger picture given its scope goes beyond local government to include state government as well as utilities.
We’re excited to share this report with you when it’s ready – stay tuned.
“These participant change results are exciting (however) we believe more could be done to evaluate community level of trust in decisions that are made via deliberative processes.”
EXPANDING OUR RESEARCH
These participant change results are exciting. We’re honoured to have been part of designing and facilitating these powerful, high-influence engagement processes. However, we note that the survey respondents were deliberative process participants who were a core part of the engagement experience and inherently invested in the outcomes.
While it is inspiring to see the transformative impact on these participants recorded, we know that not enough is being done to measure how the communities being represented by these deliberative groups are responding to this work. More could be done to evaluate (in a quantitative way) their level of trust in decisions that are made via deliberative processes.
We also believe there is much room for improvement in how organisations connect with the communities affected by each decision. We are interested in building our understanding in this space, and we’re working on ideas for research in this area.
like FREEbies? we have lots of COOL stuff
Did you know that our website is packed with free downloads? Here’s a small taste of the tips, guides and resources that are just a click away:
Free guide to deliberation for Victorian Councils
Deliberative Engagement Principles
Critical Thinking Skills and Questions
Plus, we have a suite of free videos.
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