Heft36 1 - SFB 580 - Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena

SZALMA IVETT / SZEL BERNADETT
Gender has a significant effect on both the
representative sample and the pre-deliberation
group. After deliberation the gender-effect
disappeared. The educational background
influenced the answers of respondents in T1
and T2. Those who completed vocational school
are the most likely to agree with the statement
‘Unemployment should be avoided at any cost’
than the reference group in the representative
sample. While those who completed secondary
school are less likely to agree with the statement
‘Unemployment cannot be totally avoided’ than
the reference group in the pre-deliberation
group. Nevertheless, the educational effect
also vanishes in the post-deliberation group.
At the same time, employment status has a
significant effect only on the post-deliberation
group: those who are working full-time are
more than three times as likely to think that
‘Unemployment cannot be avoided totally’
than the reference group.
Those who speak a foreign language are more
likely to believe that unemployment cannot be
totally avoided than those who do not speak
a foreign language in T1 and T2. However,
this difference also disappears in T3. The age
variable has a significant effect on the small
groups: those between 30-55 years are most
likely to think that unemployment cannot be
avoided in T2, while those over 55 are most
likely to believe that unemployment should be
avoided in T3. These results also verify our first
hypotheses.
2.7. Employment policies
Employment policies are regulatory activities
of the state to tackle unemployment.
Theoretically, employment policies are usually
divided into two groups: active employment
policies and passive employment policies. The
aim of passive employment policies is to take
care of people who lost their jobs. On the
contrary, the intention of active employment
policies is to help the unemployed find a job.
First, we examined whether the theoretical
structure of employment policies (active
and passive) exists in the minds of people in
the representative survey. In the T1 and T2
interview sessions, factor analyses did not
suggest that the theoretical structure could be
found in the minds of participants. However,
we found a factor structure (active and passive
employment policies) in the post-deliberative
session. We think that the existence of
theoretical structure in the post-deliberation
session is due to the fact that the moderators
aggregated the employment policies several
times during the deliberation, so people
learn of the employment policies during the
deliberation. The results of T3 interview are
shown in Table 38.
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