When it comes to deliberation, there is a lot of received wisdom that shapes how practitioners work. Whether it's that in-person engagement beats online or a view that expert Q&A must be an essential part of high-quality deliberation, the problem is that there is very little comparative data to evidence these assumptions. 

We think commissioners of deliberation should be able to make decisions grounded in evidence - even when evidence threatens the sector's sacred cows, or even our own. That’s why we’ve run a series of experiments. 

We tested deliberation's biggest assumption that in-person is best. We dropped the expert Q&A from half our deliberative workshops to see whether it made a difference. And we discovered one thing that actually changes people's minds in a deliberation.

If you're commissioning public deliberation and want to talk about designing it for both quality and value - online, in person, or a blend of the two - we'd love to hear from you. Please email us at [email protected].