Parliamentary Debates as Method of Deliberation for Students

<p align="right">V. Nikul</p><p>Abstract to Graduate Qualification Work named &laquo;Parliamentary Debates as Method of Deliberation for Students&raquo;</p><p>This work studied influence of student&rsquo;s parliamentary debates (SPD) on social values of students and possibility to use SPD as deliberation method (DM)</p><p>Study is divided on four blocks; each of them is the one of research objectives. First two blocks is clarifying SPD and DM principles. Then SPD and DM is compared on theoretical level (this is 3^rd research objective) and then compared on empirical level (4^th objective)</p><p>This logic aims to show that SPD can be use as DM</p><p>Empirical part of the work was conducted with quantitative research method. There were two groups: experimental (students who were participated in SPD) and control group (those who didn&rsquo;t participated)</p><p>Each group included 36 students of different Moscow universities (HSE, MSU, MGIMO)</p><p>Average age: 20 years, Min: 18 years, max: 24 years.</p><p>Gender distribution: 60 (male)/40(female)</p><p>Research method: longitudinal questionnaire survey, in two waves.</p><p>First wave was conducted in the moment of new season in Moscow debating clubs; second one was conducted few months after.</p><p>This logic of the study gave us two groups to trace any values changes that can happen with students and two waves exclude self-selection issue</p><p>Questionnaires provided to the both groups in both waves were completely identical. This questionnaire included questions about tolerance to sexual and ethnical minorities. This topic was chosen as social, actual and not required some special expertise. Questionnaire also included some socio-demographic questions</p><p>Gathered data was analyzed with SPSS tools: z-test and t-test (independent sample and two samples)</p><p>Study results as follows:</p><ol><li>There is no self-selection in the experimental (debaters) group &ndash; both groups results in the first wave didn&rsquo;t showed significant difference</li><li>SPD influenced experimental group social values (tolerance) &ndash; there is a significant difference between first group results in two waves</li><li>Control group values didn&rsquo;t changed at any significant level. That proves a hypothesis that SPD have influence on the values, not some other third-party factor</li></ol><p>Main output from the work is new oversight on the SPD: it&rsquo;s not only the intellectual game, it&rsquo;s could be the method of changing values now. That hypothesis was proved on theoretical and then empirical levels</p><p>Further research could be aimed on the direct comparison of SPD and DM to understand main similarities and differences of the both methods and have on opportunity to create new DM method with some SPD tools</p>