Panel 7: Experimental Research in the Study of Public Opinion and Voting Behaviour
Adapting the original setting of the Deliberative Poll®, the citizens of Chieti (Region Abruzzo, Italy) do experience a pilot event, organized by the City and the University.
In order to answer the research question: “how much do misperceptions of fear matter?” this pilot experiment deals with two issues, the main being urban security and the “embedded” being third country migration, in a unique context.
On the one hand, as the most recent data (Eurostat 2014) on crimes in this area show, it will be measured the perception (and the idea) of security of the participants, in a low-rate crimes situation; on the other hand, strictly interconnected with this main issue, it will be measured how the deliberators deal with the (almost unknown in their real life) topic of immigration, considering that Chieti, likewise every other territory of the Region Abruzzo, has no experience of compulsory quotas of third country migrants decided at a national level (because of the terrible earthquake L’Aquila suffered in April 2009).
Experimental design will follow the main guidelines elaborated by Fishkin for his Deliberative Poll®, with adjustments due to the availability of public officers, experts and participants: while testing the treated group on the deliberation day (before and after), only a day before will the treated and control group be pre-tested, and a week after the questionnaire will be filled again by both of them; moreover, the small groups will deliberate on the selected issues after a previous introduction of the City Mayor and Public Security Officers and with the briefing material at their disposal; finally, the plenary sessions are held twice.
Recordings will be made of the discussions, in order to make further analysis of the experiment, eventually measuring the quality of the deliberations with appropriate coding instruments already developed.
