Evaluating the Quality of a Public Deliberation Through the Use of Enhanced Qualitative Analysis

Public deliberations engage a diverse group of stakeholders to discuss and deliberate on issues that are value-based or contentious. Evaluating the quality of deliberations is critical because outcomes can inform public policy decisions. Quality evaluations often include a qualitative analysis of verbatim transcripts of deliberation sessions to determine if deliberation goals are met, but the analytic methods that are often used are often not well developed. The purpose of this report is to describe a quality evaluation of a public deliberation on the acceptability of minor self-consent for biomedical HIV prevention trials that used enhanced qualitative analysis. The analysis included a directed content analysis using an established framework of deliberation principles, frequency code counts displayed on distribution tables, and an inductive content analysis to describe the nature of the remarks coded to each principle. The evaluation confirmed the overall high quality of the deliberation but also revealed that quality would have been enhanced by strategies that better encouraged deliberants to (a) challenge opinions of others, (b) consider a societal perspective in forming their views, (c) consistently provide reasons for stated opinions, and (d) apply information provided by experts in their arguments. The results of the quality evaluation can be used to inform protocol refinement and facilitator training for future deliberations.