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CHOICEDIALOGUE™ Methodology
 Viewpoint Learning's ChoiceDialogue methodology
differs from polls and focus groups in its purpose,
advance preparation, and depth
of inquiry.
- Purpose: ChoiceDialogues are designed
to do what polls and focus groups cannot
do and were never developed to do. Polls and focus groups provide
an accurate snapshot of people's
current thinking.
ChoiceDialogues are designed to predict the
future direction of people's views on important issues where they
have not completely made up their minds,
or where changed circumstances create new challenges that need to
be recognized and addressed. Under these conditions, people's top-of-mind
opinions are highly unstable, and polls and focus groups can be very
misleading.
ChoiceDialogues enable people – through dialogue with their peers – to
develop their own fully worked through views
on such issues even if they previously have not given them much thought.
By engaging representative samples of the
population in this way, ChoiceDialogues provide
unique insight into how people's views change as they learn. ChoiceDialogues
can be used to identify areas of potential public support where leaders
can successfully implement policies consonant with people's core
values.
- Advance Preparation: ChoiceDialogues
require highly trained facilitators and preparation
using special workbooks that brief people on the issues. These workbooks
formulate a manageable number of research-based scenarios, each presented
as a series of values-based choices.
 The
workbooks lay out the pros and cons of each scenario
in a manner that allows participants to work
though how they really think and feel about each
one. The workbook format also enables people
to absorb and apply complex information quickly.
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- Depth of Inquiry: Polls and focus groups
avoid changing people's minds, while ChoiceDialogues are designed to explore
how and why people's minds change as they learn.
While
little or no learning occurs in the course of
participating in a poll or focus group, ChoiceDialogues
involve a huge amount of participant learning.
ChoiceDialogues
are day-long, highly structured dialogues – 24
times as long as the average poll and four times
as long as the average focus group. Typically,
participants spend the morning familiarizing
themselves with the scenarios and their pros
and cons. Through dialogue, participants develop
their vision of what they would like to have
happen in the future. Participants spend the
afternoon testing their preferences against the
hard and often painful tradeoffs they would need
to make to realize their values.
To encourage
learning, the ChoiceDialogue methodology is based
on dialogue rather than debate. It is through
dialogue that public opinion really forms – by
people talking with friends, neighbors and co-workers.
ChoiceDialogue sessions allow intense social
learning. Both quantitative and qualitative measures
are used to determine how and why people's views
change as they learn.
Go back to ChoiceDialogue
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