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

SZALMA IVETT / SZEL BERNADETT
Table 42. What do people think: Government should cut taxes vs. Government
should no spend more on education, health care and pension? Measured on a 7 degree scale.
1-7 degree
scale %
Government should
decrease taxes even if this
means less funding for education,
health care and pension. (1-3)
The middle of
the scale (4)
Government should spend
more on education, health
care and pension. (5-7)
Mean
In the survey
research
Pre-deliberation
in the small groups
Post-deliberation
in the small groups
39.2% 34.9% 25.9%
3.61
30.5% 34.3% 35.2%
4.14
29.8% 35.6% 34.6% 4.14
T1 – T2: Statistically significant change (t=-2.717, p0.05)
Table 42 proves that there are significant
differences between the T1 and T2 sessions.
Deliberation did not bring significant changes
in this issue, as we can see in table 42. Both in
the pre- and post- deliberation small groups,
around 30% of respondents prefered decreased
taxes, even if this means less funding for
education, health care and pensions. On the
other hand, 35% declared that the government
should spend more on education, health care
and pension. It is surprising that the deliberation
did not bring any significant changes, because
the most important result of earlier research
on the tax awareness (Csontos, Kornai, &
Tóth, 1996) was that if the citizens know
more about the cost of the state programs they
will change their opinion about the role of
the state, subsequently prefering to decrease
the role of the state and emphasizing more the
role of the market.
The differences between T1 and T2 might
be due to the composition effect and/or the
briefing materials. The composition effect can
be excluded by focusing the analyses on those
people who took part in the small group conversation
(Table 43). In Table 43 the component
effect has been excluded because answers
of the same people can be found there. Still,
the significant differences between T1 and T2
remain. Consequently, it is assumed that the
variance is caused by the briefing materials.
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