[Add] Awareness of oppositional/aligned arguments

[JamesPHoughton]

Mutz describes two of the outcomes of deliberative democracy as increased "Awareness of oppositional arguments" and "Depth of understanding of one's own positions".

Mutz, Diana C. 2006. Hearing the Other Side: Deliberative versus Participatory Democracy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

According to Arendt, exposure to conflicting political views also plays an integral role in encouraging “enlarged mentality,” that is, the capacity to form an opinion “by considering a given issue from different viewpoints, by making present to my mind the standpoints of those who are absent. ...The more people’s standpoints I have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and the better I can imagine how I would feel and think if I were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinion.”24 Interactions with others of differing views are assumed to be “essential for us to comprehend and to come to appreciate the perspective of others.”25

(pg 69-70) [Data from political network surveys, not actual deliberations] To serve as dependent variables for tests of the effects of cross-cutting exposure on awareness of rationales for own and for opposing political perspectives, open-ended questions were used to solicit issue-specific rationales for three separate controversies. ... Respondents were asked what reasons they could think of for each of the various viewpoints (“Regardless of your own views, what reasons can you think of for ...?”). In other words, they were asked to view the issues through the eyes of the opposition, as well as from their own perspective. The order in which own and opposing view questions appeared was randomized to prevent potential order effects. The open-ended responses were later coded into individual rationales by two independent coders.

Volunteered rationales for own and opposing views were not evaluated by any external standards of sophistication. But coders did eliminate from the counts the rationales that served to delegitimize the other viewpoint. For example, if a respondent explained why others supported Bill Clinton with reference to negative personal traits of the opinion holder (“Other people might vote for him because they are stupid”) or negative traits of Clinton (“He’s so slippery and slick and a good puppet”), then these were not counted as acknowledgments of a legitimate basis for the oppositional viewpoint.

Mutz, Diana C., and Jeffery J. Mondak. 2006. “The Workplace as a Context for Cross-Cutting Political Discourse.” The Journal of Politics 68 (1): 140–55.

Awareness of rationales supporting own views/opposing views: "We are interested in hearing about the reasons people have for [supporting different presidential candidates/ favoring different sides of this issue]. Regardless of your own views, what reasons can you think of for [supporting Bill Clinton/Bob Dole for President] [keeping responsibility with the federal government/transferring responsibility to the individual state governments] [favoring/opposing affirmative action programs]?"

Mutz, Diana C. 2002. “Cross-Cutting Social Networks: Testing Democratic Theory in Practice.” The American Political Science Review 96 (1): 111–26.

Awareness of Rationales for Own and Opposing Views. “We are interested in hearing about the reasons people have for [supporting different presidential candidates/ favoring different sides of this issue] Regardless of your own views, what reasons can you think of for [supporting Bill Clinton/Bob Dole for President] [keeping responsibility with the federal government/transferring responsibility to the individual state governments] [favoring/opposing affirmative action programs]?”

Vincent Price Joseph N. Cappella Lilach Nir. 2010. “Does Disagreement Contribute to More Deliberative Opinion?” Political Communication 19 (1): 95–112.

a series of four open-ended questions asked respondents to give reasons why they were favorable (o r unfavorable) toward each party, followed by a question asking for reasons why other people might have the opposing view (see the Appendix for exact question wording). Responses to these open-ended questions were coded in the following manner. When the answer was irrelevant, did not make sense, merely restated the opinion, indicated that the person did not know why he or she held that opinion, alluded in a vague way to the parties’ positions, or was a statement about party membership only, it was coded as zero. For example, statements such as “I like the Democratic party,” and “The Democrats smell” were coded as zero. For each substantive answer, one point was given for every reason the respondent wrote. For example, the following response received a score of six. Question: What are the reasons you have for feeling very unfavorable toward the Republican party? Answer: Views on abortion (1), too close ties to business interests (2), fight against raising minimum wage (3) and other ways to help the poor and working class Americans (4), insistence on tax cuts (5), fight against making health care benefits more available and affordable (6).

Reasons for own opinion. In the example above, a person who is unfavorable toward the Republican party is stating six different reasons that justify his or her unfavorable views; hence, these would be coded as reasons for his or her own opinion. Similarly, reasons given by this same person for why he or she might feel favorably toward th e Democratic party would also be coded as reasons in support of his or her own opinion. No restrictions were applied to symmetry in liking of the two parties. That is, people could report liking both or disliking both; in all cases, reasons given in support of their feelings were coded as reasons for their own opinions. A combined index of the coded responses was constructed as the sum of respondents’ reasons for holding their own opinions (a = .77, one factor accounting for 81% of the variance). The number of reasons for own opinion index ranged from 0 to 20, with about 16% giving no reasons and about 46% giving 2 to 5 reasons (Mdn = 3, M = 3.94, SD = 3.25).

Reasons why others might disagree. After being asked to supply reasons for their own opinions, respondents were asked to offer reasons why other people might hold the opposite view. Someone who indicated favorability toward the Republican party, for instance, was then asked to provide reasons why others might be unfavorable toward th e Republican party. Similarly, a person who was unfavorable toward the Democratic party was asked to state reasons why others might be favorable toward Democrats. A combined index of the coded responses was constructed as the sum of respondents’ listed reasons (a = .80, one factor accounting for 83% of the variance). The index for the number of reasons for why others might disagree ranged from 0 to 16, with about 28% giving no reasons and slightly more than 40% giving 1 to 3 reasons (Mdn = 2, M = 2.66, SD = 2.64).

Can we do a pre/post test with this measure, or would it too strongly affect the discussion? Allison and Mike suggest that thinking of discussion topics prior to conversation has a significant effect on the conversation's progress, so it's possible that we would damage the external validity of these samples. Might be a good intervention, though.

Survey Title

"Super Special Survey" <- note, this is just a placeholder name - replace it with the name of the actual survey.

Survey Source

Survey Overview

Aggregation/scoring function

Tasks

• Create a new folder in surveys w/ descriptive, easy-to-read name superSpecialSurvey/
• Create SurveyJS .json file (e.g. superSpecialSurvey/superSpecialSurvey.json)
  • Change the default completion page to a blank page ("showCompletedPage": false)
• Create a .bib file citing your references for the survey (always: superSpecialSurvey/references.bib)
• Create file with function to aggregate survey data (e.g. superSpecialSurvey.score.js)
• Create a cypress test of the survey (e.g. superSpecialSurvey.cy.jsx)
  • Include a line to take a screenshot at the end of every page
• Create a readme markdown file to document (always: superSpecialSurvey/README.md)
  • Include relevant screenshots
• Update the package minor version
• Rebuild the package using npm run build to update SHAs
• Create PR and link to this issue