(Page 9 of 27) - Participation bias and framing effects in citizens� juries authored by French, Damien. and Laver, Michael.

Participation bias and framing effects in citizens’ juries / 8

turn up, actually made an appearance. Given such high attrition rates, which tend rarely to be
given in reports of deliberative experiments (see however Hansen & Andersen 2004, Merkle
1996)), it seems a priori very likely indeed that the jury was a biased selection of the population it
was intended to represent.

Table 1 analyzes jury attrition in terms of standard demographic characteristics.

Comparing demographics for random invitees with those of the Dublin population more
generally, we are reassured to see that the sample of random invitees had essentially the same
demographic characteristics as the population as a whole. However, Table 1 does show that there
were indeed biases in attrition rates from the original sample of invitees, in terms of age, gender
and educational level. It also allows us to see whether these biases emerged at the point of
agreeing to participate in the jury, or at the point of a last-minute no-show. People aged 24 were
under-represented in the jury; this was not because they were less likely to agree to participate,
but because they were less likely to turn up for the jury on the day (at 10am on a Sunday
morning!), having agreed to do so. In contrast, people with lower levels of educational attainment
were under-represented; but this was because they were less likely to agree to participate in the
first place. People with college or university education were strikingly over-represented, both
because they were more likely to agree to participate, and because they were more likely to show
up on the day, having agreed. Overall, in a finding that supports those reported by other authors
(at least for gender and education: Hansen & Andersen 2004, Merkle 1996), the net result of all of
this is that the eventual citizens’ jury was older, more male, and better educated than the
population as a whole.

It seems plausible a priori that those who both agreed to participate in the jury and

actually turned up on the morning of the deliberation were more generally inclined than the
typical citizen to participation in political decision-making. Our research design, drawing jurors
from the IES, allows us to compare jurors’ attitudes to participation, and reported voting turnout,
with those of Dublin citizens more generally. A series of questions relating to political efficacy
were asked in the IES (for full question wordings see Appendix 2). The IES also asked whether
respondents had voted in each of the three opportunities to this at a national level in the 12
months prior to the survey – the 2002 general election and two national referendums. Voting
turnout in these three polls was aggregated to create a four point “voting rate” scale that ranged
from 0 (no turnout in any of the three elections) for the most lethargic voters, to 3 (turnout in all
three elections) for the most avid.

Table 2 compares the set of jurors who turned up on the day with the general Dublin

citizenry on each of these measures. Note that all of these attitudes relate to responses in the IES
collected long before the start of any “treatment” of the jurors, by writing to them asking them to
participate in a jury. This table shows that the jurors were not any more prone to vote than Dublin
citizens in general; they were no more likely to think they were better informed about politics;
and they were no more or less prone to think that politics makes a difference. However, they were
less likely to agree that politics is too complicated for people like them to understand, and they
were also less likely to agree that ordinary people have no influence on politics. In this sense they
can be seen to have a higher sense of personal efficacy, perhaps making them open to other forms
of political participation.

Our research design allows us to go much further than this, however, and investigate the

extent to which the attrition effects resulted in a jury with unrepresentative attitudes on the precise
matter for deliberation. A priori, it certainly seems plausible that those jurors who presented
themselves were more interested than the general population in environmental issues generally,
and the thermal treatment of waste in particular, since these attitudes made them more likely to
participate in the jury deliberation. Table 3 offers some answers to this question.