As the academic debate over the merits of deliberative democracy and deliberative polling heats up following Professor Lupia's initial criticisms (and the response of deliberative polling continues to consider the potential effects:
The Tomorrow's Europe poll first requires a stronger and more clearly stated set of goals than appears on their website. Then, turn those goals into hypotheses that can be evaluated with data that you are able to collect.
Implicit in the presentation is the notion that a DP leads to better or more refined citizen opinions. There are ways to turn such claims into testable hypotheses.
For example, if an experiment in the scientific sense were actually being run, you could compare participants' abilities to accomplish certain politically relevant tasks with or without the DP stimulus. Depending on the nature of the experiment, you could also document which aspect of the DP were effective (briefing materials, presentations, conversations with others, etc.) and which were not.
You could also determine whether or not DPs have different effects than other communication mediums, such as newspapers. If you are not attempting to make such comparisons amongst communicative modes, then you will be assuming your answer to such questions rather than running true experiments.
In addition, if you want to claim that the effects of a DP are anything more than transitory, it will be important to compare the opinions of participants and a non-participant control group weeks and months after the event.
