alternative polling devise

Using Fiskens’ idea of deliberative polling, one can devise a similar poll but with the added benefits of technologies that have emerged since the 1990’s when he developed his process. IN a very similar fashion as his, a representative sample of the nation can be obtained as the stage one of this process. Next, using a Computer Assisted Self Interviewing (CASI), in which, the computer administers a structured set of questions to the respondent and in the process records the respondent's answers, preliminary responses can be documented (Aquilino, Supple and Wright: 1998) In the next stage of the process, the participants will be asked to participants will be asked to be engaged in a modified version of the deliberative polling technique. Here, internet will be used as a means to replace resource, money and time constraining process of gathering many people at one spot, organizing them, organizing focus groups, televising it and polling again.
An informative and interactive issue website will be created. The participants will be asked to engage in discussions online, read information provided by the experts in the issue, asked to write blogs about their own changing and evolving opinions about the issue at hand and comment about blogs of other participants. In a sense, the participants will be asked to read through series of informative blogs by the experts and other participants, journal their own opinions, watch webcasts from the experts all in a stimulated and timed environment online. This is much like an online course offered by majority of the Universities across the nation. After a week long, intense, online training and information sharing, it is hoped that the participants will be just as likely to be informed about the issue as they would be had they been involved in the expensive original deliberative process. In the final stage of this process, they participants will again be polled using a Computer Assisted Self Interviewing (CASI) and be asked the original questions.

In this process, idea is pretty much the same as deliberative polling. This process will also measure how the public will react or think had they been better informed and closer to ideal citizens of a democratic nation. It will however greatly reduce the resource constrains introduced by having to organize and pay for thousands of people’s accommodating for a weekend. It will introduce some issues that are prevalent with using computers and internet such as exclusion of certain groups of people who do not own computers or internet or do not have access to it. But, other means such as telephone interviewing would exclude all the cell phone users who do not have home phone. Self administered mail-in surveys have a very small response rate and traditional deliberate polling are expensive.