Burchardt, Tania (2012) Deliberative research as a tool to make value judgements. CASEpapers, CASE/159. Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.
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The ‘deliberative turn’ in democratic theory has generated a wealth of deliberative experiments. The purpose of deliberation as a research technique (as opposed to policymaking or public consultation) is distinctive: to uncover the public’s informed, considered, and collective view on a normative question. In the social science context, this often arises in relation to research on poverty, well-being and inequality, where there is a need to define and justify the thresholds and concepts adopted on a deeper basis than convention alone can offer. This paper compares deliberative research to more traditional methods of studying the values of the general public, such as in-depth interviewing, attitudinal surveys, and participatory approaches, and reveals that deliberative designs involve a number of assumptions, including a strong fact/value distinction, an emphasis on ‘outsider’ expertise, and a view of participants as essentially similar to each other rather than defined by socio-demographic differences. Normative decisions permeate the design and implementation of deliberative research, so while it has the potential to provide uniquely considered, insightful and well-justified answers to the problem of defining a collective position on key questions in social science, transparency at all stages of the process is essential.
|Item Type:||Monograph (Discussion Paper)|
|Additional Information:||© 2012 The Author|
|Library of Congress subject classification:||H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory|
|Journal of Economic Literature Classification System:||B - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology > B5 - Current Heterodox Approaches > B50 - General|
|Sets:||Collections > Economists Online
Research centres and groups > Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion (CASE)
|Date Deposited:||23 May 2012 10:46|
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