Many researchers claim that facilitation is a determining factor, if not a necessary condition, for successful deliberative discussion, but little research has applied randomized experimental designs to empirically test such claim. This article analyzes the effect of professionally facilitated versus non-facilitated discussions in a real-life context on participants’ attitudes and the perceived quality of group deliberation, controlling for various individual- and group-level variables. We conducted 26 deliberative discussions with 226 teachers from 13 primary schools on the topic of school discipline measures. We assessed the teachers’ post-discussion perceptions of the perceived quality of the group deliberation and their attitudes toward school discipline measures pre- and post-discussion. The results show the facilitation’s significant influences on attitude change and the perceived quality of the group deliberation. Quality of deliberation is also influenced by heterogeneity of restorative attitudes in discussion groups, whereas attitude change is to a large extent determined also by pre-discussion attitudes.

中文翻译：

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促进对审议质量和态度转变的影响

许多研究人员声称，如果不是必要条件，促进是成功的审议讨论的决定性因素，但很少有研究应用随机实验设计来实证检验这种说法。本文分析了在现实生活环境中专业促进与非促进讨论对参与者态度和群体审议的感知质量的影响，控制了各种个人和群体层面的变量。我们与来自 13 所小学的 226 名教师就学校纪律措施进行了 26 次协商讨论。我们在讨论前后评估了教师对小组讨论质量的讨论后感知以及他们对学校纪律措施的态度。结果表明，促进对态度改变和群体协商的感知质量有显着影响。讨论的质量也受到讨论组中修复态度的异质性的影响，而态度的改变在很大程度上也取决于讨论前的态度。