Legislative Effectiveness Committee
Louisville, KY
July, 2010
Deliberative Questions:
A Quick Guide for Moderators of Community Conversations
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PERSONAL STAKE
- How has this issue affected you personally?
- Has anyone had a personal experience that illustrates this problem?
- Within your family or circle of friends, is this an important issue?
- What makes this issue real for us?
VALUE
- What things are most valuable to people who support this option?
- What is appealing about this option?
- What makes this option a poor idea - or a good one?
FAIR HEARING
- What do you like most / least about this choice?
- It sounds like you feel strongly in support of/against this choice. What about this choice troubles / appeals to you?
- What is the strongest argument against / in favor of this choice?
- Phrased in a positive light, what seems to be most important to those who are attracted to this choice?
COSTS & CONSEQUENCES
- What would result from doing what this option proposes?
- What could be the consequences of doing what this option suggests?
- What costs are at stake and can we live with them? in order to achieve ____?
- Would you give up ·
- What tradeoffs are you willing or not willing to make?
TENSIONS/CONFLICTS
- What do you see as the tensions between the options?
- Where are the conflicts that grow out of what we've said about this issue?
- Why is this issue so difficult to decide?
- What are the "gray areas?"
- What remains unsolved for this group?
COMMON GROUND
- What direction seems best, or where do we want to go with this?
- What tradeoffs are we willing to accept? What tradeoffs are we unwilling to accept?
- What common ground can we detect in this group to provide guidance to policymakers?
- What are we willing to do as individuals or a community?
- What actions did you hear that you sensed we could not accept or live with?
- What seemed important to all of us?
- Have we come to some common ground to support certain actions? What are those actions?
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