Seeing Deliberation Increases Trust and Attendance at School Board Meetings

📊 What Was Tested

Would public meetings generate more civic engagement if they were simply structured to be more engaging? This question was tested using an original survey that included an oversample of racial and ethnic minorities and individuals from low-income households. The survey embedded a randomized experiment in which each participant viewed a short clip of an actual school board meeting.

🎥 What Participants Saw

• A standard meeting with no public participation
• A meeting with public participation (members of the public spoke)
• A meeting with deliberation: public participation followed by a reasoned response from the school board

Each clip was drawn from an actual school board meeting and was shown randomly to study participants.

🔬 How the Study Was Designed

• Original survey with an oversample of racial/ethnic minorities and low-income respondents
• Randomized exposure to one of three real meeting clips
• Outcomes measured included trust in local officials and willingness to attend future school board meetings

🔍 Key Findings

• Exposure to the more participatory and deliberative meeting formats increased trust in local officials.
• Viewing participatory and deliberative meetings also raised respondents' stated willingness to attend school board meetings in the future.

📣 Why It Matters

These results suggest that relatively simple changes in meeting style—allowing public participation and providing reasoned responses—can strengthen trust and motivate civic engagement at the local level. The findings have direct implications for efforts to improve public school governance, local politics, and strategies to broaden civic participation, especially among underrepresented groups.