The Many Faces of Participation in Science

Abstract

Participatory and dialogic formats are the current trend in scientific communities across all disciplines, with movements such as Public Participation, citizen science, Do-It-Yourself-Science, Public Science and many more. While these formats and the names and definitions given to them, are prospering and diversifying, there is no integrative tool to describe and compare different participatory approaches. In particular, several theories and models on participatory science governance and citizen science have been developed but these theories are poorly linked. A review of existing typologies and frameworks in the field reveals that there is no single descriptive framework that covers the normative, epistemological and structural differences within the field while being open enough to describe the great variety of participatory research. We propose a three-dimensional framework, the participatory science cube, which bridges this gap. We discuss the framework’s openness for different forms of participation as well as potential shortcomings and illustrate its application by analysing four case studies.

Social participation in science: Perspectives of Spanish civil society organizations

“…To do so, we reduced the data from interviews to codes or concepts that describe the research phenomena by creating categories. The specific categories in the “Results” section have been inductively determined from the data, but our interpretation echoes previous categorizations such as those regarding different levels of public participation in science (Arnstein, 1969; Bonney et al, 2009; Haklay, 2013; Lewenstein, 2004; Lidskog, 2008; Rowe and Frewer, 2004; Schrögel and Kolleck, 2018).…”

“…Participative practices might be classified along a spectrum from minimal engagement, to total commitment as proposed by Arnsteins (1969). Thus, social participation in science goes from crowdsourced programs for collecting data to co-construction of knowledge and of research questions through deliberative processes (Haklay, 2013; Schrögel and Kolleck, 2018).…”

100 Opportunities for More Inclusive Ocean Research: Cross-Disciplinary Research Questions for Sustainable Ocean Governance and Management

“…Innovations that increase levels of human and social capital can be just as, or more, effective in supporting ocean sustainability as are investments in ecological enhancement and technological development (Šlaus and Jacobs, 2011). Some efforts include citizen and participatory science efforts, training and education programs, and science communication (Fritz et al, 2019;Schrögel and Kolleck, 2019). As environmental systems are complex, capacity development and education must support skills rooted in systems thinking, engagement in diverse collaborations and partnerships, and leadership and management expertise (Bodin, 2017).…”

Engagement styles in an environmental citizen science project

“…Ultimately, citizen science varies in its level of participation between projects and thus cannot be collectively included in one science communication model. Schrögel and Kolleck [2019] suggested a three-dimensional framework describing the various modes of participation in science. The framework incorporates a normative focus (the degree to which the public is included in decision-making), an epistemic focus (the degree to which publics are included in knowledge generation processes) and a public outreach focus (the reach of a project beyond institutionalized scientists).…”