Caroline Lee, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lafayette College in Easton, PA, and Francesca Polletta, Professor of Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at UC, Irvine, have just released the results of a survey they did in September/October 2009 and which garnered responses from more than 400 practitioners: The 2009 Dialogue and Deliberation Practitioners Survey: What is the State of the Field?
From the about page:
We conducted the survey as part of two separate research agendas, both of which focus on multi-method analysis of issues in the dialogue and deliberation field. Caroline Lee has completed four years of fieldwork at dialogue and deliberation conferences, trainings, and courses– and is interested in testing the extent to which the perspectives and themes she is surfacing inductively are shared across a broad group of practitioners. Francesca Polletta is interested in building on earlier findings on gender in a study of online deliberation. We plan on comparing our survey results to the insights emerging from other qualitative and quantitative methods. This triangulation of methodological strategies seeks to strengthen the validity of research findings by accounting for the limitations inherent in every research method.
A few tidbits I found interesting:
- According to “Q21: Methods Used Most Often in Current Practice”, 25% or respondents are reporting frequent use of “onine/digital media”. That’s pretty cool!
- According to “Q23: Term that best describes the people and organizations currently leading D&D efforts”, 57% of respondents prefer “Community of Practice”
- According to “Q23: Most important challenge facing the D&D community, based on challenges defined by NCDD conference attendees”, 20% of respondents mention “Demonstrating to powerholders that D&D works”
The full results are available on the website and are available for download (PDF).
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