5 questions for ... Jim Roberts

Photo by Kanji Takeno

TU’s Deliberative Polling Project to lead to May 10 community event

TU is opening a dialogue on the role of a growing metropolitan university in the community. Jim Roberts, chairperson of the Department of Political Science, is coordinating the survey of faculty, staff, students and local residents.

What is deliberative polling?
Deliberative polling seeks to determine what people would think about an issue if they became more engaged and informed, rather than being merely polled. Those surveyed are invited to come to a follow-up meeting to deliberate on the issues. From a democratic standpoint, it is a better way to get at issues and express and articulate ideas and interests.

What is the Deliberative Polling Project?
It’s an initiative of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities’ American Democracy Project (ADP). The ADP’s intent is to encourage and build democratic ideals, practices and skills among American universities, their student bodies and the communities in which they live.

How did TU get involved with this project?
The provost’s office, in conjunction with the Office of Student Affairs, applied for TU to participate. We were accepted, along with 15 other universities. I have a background in polling, so they approached me to manage this.

How is the project conducted?
We’re polling from three different populations—faculty and staff, students, and community members—all which receive similar questionnaires. We’re doing faculty/staff and student surveys online through a contract the Office of Assessment has with an online survey organization. RESI will conduct a telephone survey that randomly samples residents of the ZIP codes surrounding the campus. We’re looking for about 400 responses from each population. So far the faculty/staff response rate has been better than I hoped—we’ve almost reached our threshold sample. I’ll take the data, collate it and make a report which I’ll send back to participants, so they have that information going into TU’s deliberative polling event.

Can you tell me about the deliberative polling event?
TU will host an event on Sat., May 10, which we estimate will include several hundreds of people—about 20 to 30 percent of poll respondents. Participants will break into small groups of 20 or less to identify key issues, which they will then bring back to a session with everyone—a plenary session. Issues will then be presented for discussion with the panel of experts and policy makers. We’ll repeat the model throughout the day. There will be a very short survey at the end of the event, which will ask the original questions, but which we expect will have different results. A follow-up report will be sent to the participants, as well as the policy makers and decision makers. We’re hoping to create a better-informed group of policy makers—who have directly engaged with those affected by the issues—than you might have by simply doing a survey and turning the results over to them.

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