FSD2958 Citizen Deliberation on Immigration: Survey Data 2012

Study title

Citizen Deliberation on Immigration: Survey Data 2012

Alternative Title

Deliberation Across Enclaves 2012

Dataset ID Number

FSD2958

Persistent identifier

urn:nbn:fi:fsd:T-FSD2958

Data Type

Quantitative

Authors

Abstract

The data contain the responses to five surveys conducted in connection with citizen forum organised by the Social Science Research Institute at Åbo Akademi University and funded by the Academy of Finland. The Deliberation across enclaves was an experiment on democratic deliberation, which culminated in two deliberation days organised in Turku, Finland. The aim of the research project was to study the impact of deliberation on the participants' attitudes, especially in relation to immigration.

Based on the first survey, the respondents were divided into groups, or enclaves, of people who had either positive or negative attitudes towards immigration. In the deliberation event, some participants were in groups with others of the same opinion, while some were in groups with both opinions. The aim was to compare the changes in opinions depending on group composition. Because of the research setting, the participants did not receive information about the differing composition of the groups during deliberation, but were told about the premiss, implementation, and preliminary results of the study in a debriefing event after the deliberation.

On the first collection round (questionnaire A), the respondents were asked their opinions on immigration and presented with statements relating to immigration (e.g. "It is beneficial for the Finnish economy that people move here from other countries").

The second collection round (questionnaire B) charted interest and participation in political discussions, satisfaction with Finnish immigration policy, views on politics and democracy, civic engangement, and trust in various institutions, people in general and different ethnic groups. The respondents were asked the extent to which they agreed with several statements about immigration and discussion about it, Finnish policies of accepting people from abroad, and Finland's involvement in world politics. Significance of various features and skills in determining whether a person can be considered a Finn was charted (e.g. "Is able to speak Finnish").

On the third round (questionnaire C), factual knowledge was investigated about Finnish immigration policy, immigration in Finland, and Finnish parliament and government. Questions examined knowledge about, among others, the size of the refugee quota, unemployment rate among immigrants, percentage of foreign nationals living Finland convicted of a crime in 2010, and name of the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Most of the questions from the previous rounds were repeated on the fourth round (questionnaire D) in order to study changes in respondent opinions and knowledge. Additionally, a number of statements relating to the group discussions were asked at this point. These questions charted, for instance, whether the respondents felt their opinions on immigration had changed as a result of the discussion, whether their opinions had become more certain, and what their reasons for participating in the discussion were. The final round (questionnaire E) studied the changes in respondent opinions and knowledge by repeating previously asked questions for the second or third time.

Background variables included, among others, the respondent's year of birth, gender, education, marital status, economic activity and occupational status, identification with a political party, membership in organisation or association, religiosity and membership in a religious community as well as annual gross income of the household and number of people in the household.

Keywords

deliberation; democracy; immigration; immigration policy; political action; political attitudes; public opinion

Topic Classification

Series

Individual datasets

Distributor

Finnish Social Science Data Archive

Access

The dataset is (B) available for research, teaching and study.

Data Collector

  • Åbo Akademi University. Social Science Research Institute

Time Period Covered

2012

Collection Dates

2011-12-02 – 2012-04-20

Nation

Finland

Geographical Coverage

Finland

Analysis/Observation Unit Type

Individual

Universe

Finnish or Swedish-speaking persons born in the years 1936-1993 living in Turku region

Time Method

Cross-section

Sampling Procedure

Probability: Simple random

The initial short survey was sent to 12,000 randomly sampled adults in the Turku region, out of whom 4,681 persons (39%) responded. The survey consisted of 14 questions whose aim was to measure the respondents’ attitudes on immigration. Respondents with no clear opinion on immigration as well as respondents with extreme opinions were excluded to form enclaves that comprised persons that had clear views on the topic and whose opinion could potentially change.

The second survey and an invitation to take part in the deliberation as well as the separate debriefing event was sent to 2,601 people who qualified as members of either the 'for' or the 'against' enclave. Of these, 805 volunteered and 366 were invited to take part in the deliberation event. The third survey was sent with the invitations.

The number of participants in the deliberation event was ultimately 207 and they responded to additional questions presented in two more surveys. This dataset contains the responses of these 207 participants to all five surveys.

Collection Mode

Self-administered questionnaire: Paper

Research Instrument

Structured questionnaire

Data File Language

Downloaded data package may contain different language versions of the same files.

The data files of this dataset are available in the following languages: Finnish.

FSD translates quantitative data into English on request, free of charge. More information on ordering data translation.

Data Version

2.0

Completeness of Data and Restrictions

The data were collected by using five different questionnaires (A, B, C, D, and E). The questions are numbered according to the questionnaire they belonged to (A1, A2, ..., B1, B2, ..., C1, C2, ..., etc.). The number of each question can be found at the beginning of the question text in square brackets. The numbers in ordinary brackets that follow refer to the identical question in another questionnaire. For example, '[A1] (d1, e1) Finland needs to accept more immigrants. Do you think this is a good or a bad suggestion?' is the first question in questionnaire A and is also asked as the first question in questionnaires D and E.

The variable BV2 representing respondents' attitudes to immigration was created by combining the variables related to immigration (A1-A14 and D1-D14).

Weighting

There are no weight variables in the data.

Citation Requirement

The data and its creators shall be cited in all publications and presentations for which the data have been used. The bibliographic citation may be in the form suggested by the archive or in the form required by the publication.

Bibliographical Citation

Grönlund, Kimmo (Åbo Akademi University): Citizen Deliberation on Immigration: Survey Data 2012 [dataset]. Version 2.0 (2018-08-20). Finnish Social Science Data Archive [distributor]. https://urn.fi/urn:nbn:fi:fsd:T-FSD2958

Deposit Requirement

Notify FSD of all publications where you have used the data by sending the citation information to user-services.fsd@tuni.fi.

Disclaimer

The original data creators and the archive bear no responsibility for any results or interpretations arising from the reuse of the data.

Related Publications Tooltip

Karjalainen, Maija & Rapeli, Lauri (2014). Who will not deliberate? Attrition in a multi-stage citizen deliberation experiment. Quality & Quantity 49(1), 407-422.

Grönlund, Kimmo & Herne, Kaisa & Setälä, Maija (2015). Does Enclave Deliberation Polarize Opinions? Political Behavior. December 2015, Volume 37, Issue 4, pp 995-1020. DOI:10.1007/s11109-015-9304-x

Lindell, Marina & Bächtiger, André & Grönlund, Kimmo & Herne, Kaisa & Setälä, Maija & Wyss, Dominik (2016). What Drives the Polarization and Moderation of Opinions? Evidence from a Finnish Citizen Deliberation Experiment on Immigration. Online first European Journal of Political Research. DOI: 10.1111/1475-6765.12162

Christensen, Henrik S., Himmelroos, Staffan & Grönlund, Kimmo (2017). Does Deliberation Breed an Appetite for Discursive Participation? Assessing the Impact of First-Hand Experience. Political Studies 65(1S), pp. 64-83. DOI: 10.1177/0032321715617771

Himmelroos, Staffan; Rapeli, Lauri & Grönlund, Kimmo (2017). Talking with Like-minded People. Equality and Efficacy in Enclave Deliberation. The Social Science Journal 54, pp. 148-158. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.soscij.2016.10.006

Study description in machine readable DDI-C 2.5 format

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