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Twenty-five of the 150 people who registered and then were randomly selected to participate in the Citizens' Parliament either declined or did not confirm the offer. This meant that we had to mount a supplementary round to randomly select the participants. In the interest of transparency, this article describes how this was carried out on 15 September, 2008.
Recall that our objective was to randomly select, from the registration pool of over 2700 citizens, one participant from each of the 150 federal electorates such that certain demographic categories were distributed like the general population.
The supplementary draw is designed to match the demographic distribution of the people who did not accept places in the first round, and just for those electorates that remain unfilled. Thus the overall distribution is maintained.
After the first round, one registered citizen who declared as indigenous did not confirm. With only a dozen indigenous registrations altogether to choose from, we looked at the roster and found one other person in the same electorate as the original declared as indigenous, who also happened to be male and of about the same age. We selected him arbitrarily and confirmed his attendance.
We then reconfigured the same program used in the initial random selection, but this time to only choose from a registration pool of 25 electorates, and with demographic quotas set to match the distribution of those who didn't accept. Only the one selected indigenous person was included in the pool, to include all his demographic dimensions in the distribution.
Initial runs on the same tolerances did not achieve a result. The difficulty was that 44% (ie. 11) of the 25 non-acceptances declared an educational level of Year 11 or below, which was much higher than the norm. Counter-intuitively, the tolerance on education was tightened, which more severely capped the levels of other educational categories. The first successful run was realised shortly thereafter, the results of which are shown below.
Henceforth, a different process will be applied if participants are unable to fulfil their commitment to attend the final sitting of the Citizens' Parliament in Canberra. A replacement will be arbitrarily chosen from the same electorate as the withdrawn participant, with the closest demographic match to the withdrawn participant in priority order of aboriginality, gender, age and education. The rationale is that randomness not only applied to the selection of the original person, but to his or her demographic categorisation, which we formulaicly re-apply to a different candidate in the electorate. If there are multiple candidates, we choose the citizen who has made more posts to the Online Deliberation as part of the Online Parliament. If this is not demonstrable, then we will roll a dice.
Addendum 10 Dec 2008
The random selection of last minute replacements will change. The Citizens Parliament Regional Meetings have been a vital way to introduce Citizen Parliamentarians to the topic of "strengthening our political system" and to the deliberative process of the planned Citizens' Parliament. However, since there will be no more Regional Meetings after 14 Dec, any additional replacements required after this date will be randomly selected from the Online Parliament, aiming for someone from each electorate. This will ensure all participants in the Citizens Parliament have had an introduction to the topic and the process of the Citizens' Parliament before joining the deliberations on 6th February 09.
Log of stratified random sampling run at 2008-9-15 11h56m46s
File: C:\Projects\University of Sydney\Random Selection Software\Participant Supplementary Pool.csv
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Run 68.
Quota limit education Bachelors degree.
Quota limit age 55-64.
Quota limit age 35-44.
Quota limit age 25-34.
Quota limit gender Female.
Insufficient education Year 11 or below (-45.45%).
Run 69.
Quota limit education Bachelors degree.
Quota limit age 25-34.
Quota limit age 55-64.
Quota limit education TAFE qualification.
Quota limit age 35-44.
Insufficient education Year 11 or below (-36.36%).
Run 70.
Quota limit age 35-44.
Quota limit education Bachelors degree.
Quota limit age 18-24.
Quota limit age 55-64.
Successful demographic selection:
gender Male quota: 50% selected: 48.00%
gender Female quota: 50% selected: 52.00%
age 18-24 quota: 8% selected: 12.00%
age 25-34 quota: 12% selected: 12.00%
age 35-44 quota: 16% selected: 20.00%
age 45-54 quota: 28% selected: 20.00%
age 55-64 quota: 12% selected: 16.00%
age 65+ quota: 24% selected: 20.00%
education Year 11 or below quota: 44% selected: 44.00%
education Form 6/Year 12 quota: 20% selected: 16.00%
education TAFE qualification quota: 28% selected: 24.00%
education Bachelors degree quota: 8% selected: 12.00%
aboriginal Yes quota: 4% selected: 4.00% |
