Page 137 - Enabling National Initiatives to Take Democracy Beyond Elections

Surveys and the broader community engagement process you choose to complement any deliberative process require different types of decision making. The best way you can improve these methods is by changing the type of questions you ask. You should be asking questions that frame the decision around priorities, values and trade-offs (away from a rush to solutions in the absence of answered questions and background information). Asking wish-list questions in surveys does not give you very useful information – everyone wants more services and lower taxes. Asking participants what they prefer gives you information about what they would like, but weights this against competing interests to help you decide what to do first. Design decisions are more important when it comes to town-hall meetings and long deliberative projects. This is mostly because you have more things that you can change and control to give you a more robust outcome, but also because, in-person meetings have more variables. 135