A Framework for Assessing the Quality of Democratic Deliberation: Enhancing Deliberation as a Tool For Bioethics

• Published in: Journal of empirical research on human research ethics Vol. 6; no. 3; pp. 3 - 17
• Main Authors: De Vries, Raymond, Stanczyk, Aimee E., Ryan, Kerry A., Kim, Scott Y. H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA University of California Press 01-09-2011; SAGE Publications; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Aged; Alzheimers disease; Attitude; Bioethical Issues; Bioethics; Biomedical Research - ethics; Community Participation; Deliberative democracy; Dementia; Democracy; Ethics, Research; Group facilitation; Human subjects; Humans; Informed Consent; Medical research; Middle Aged; Older people; Policy Making; Public Opinion; Public Policy; Reasoning; Research ethics; Research methods; Social ethics; Understanding the Perceptions of Potential Research Populations; Vaccination; quality of deliberation; dementia; surrogate consent; deliberative democracy
• ISSN: 1556-2646; 1556-2654
• DOI: 10.1525/jer.2011.6.3.3

The goal of democratic deliberation (DD) bioethics research is to elicit informed and considered opinions on ethically controversial issues. But the trustworthiness of DD outcomes depends on the quality of deliberations. We provide a framework to evaluate the quality of deliberations and apply that framework to a DD project on surrogate consent for dementia research involving randomly selected samples of the older general public. Using a mixed method approach, we found that participants were very satisfied with the sessions, learned and used new information, were respectful and collaborative, and were able to “reason together” to arrive at societal policy recommendations. Implications and limitations of the paper are also discussed.