Inclusivity & Responsiveness
Back to the principles’ overview
Inclusivity & Responsiveness: Co-evaluation is oriented to the needs of the participants in an inclusive and balanced way. Co-evaluation should offer inclusive structures for participants to savely express themselves and potentially empower marginalized perspectives. Co-evaluation aims for actionable results and therefore enables an increase in responsiveness of the research process.
Recommendations:
- Promote open and flexible activities for co-evaluation that build on previous discussions and take insights from group reflections to action. Enact a culture of empathy, trust, and mutual respect by creating safe spaces.
- Be aware of power relations that may exist between stakeholders or emerge during the process. Emphasize non-hierarchical relations and foster interactions among participants.
- Moderation of this open and reflective process is crucial. Moderators or facilitators play a key role and should be assigned carefully. Good communication/moderation skills, empathy and impartiality are important characteristics to make sure that all participants and their views are considered in joined reflections.
- Moderators should make sure that input for evaluation is balanced and all voices are being heard. It is also important that representation should be guaranteed for all involved participants. Depending on the context you may consider bringing in an external moderator or alternate the moderation role from within the participants.
Contribute to the discussion of this principle
Enrich this principle with your own experiences, expand it with fresh views, complement, challenge and critique it – and be named as a contributor to the Whitepaper if you wish so 🙂
What steps or actions could be taken to ensure these principles are widely adopted and implemented in future projects?
I think the focus on power is so important, particularly when working with young people, and the power balances that…
I like the suggestion from PB of adaptive and early engagement. From my own experience, gaining ethical approval for a…
It is great when participants take ownership of the projects they are involved in, but does this reduce from the…
It seems to me that this principle embodies the essence of co-evaluation. Which is an action taken in order to…
This is a really important one, but perhaps also the hardest to achieve. Those marginalized perspectives are often the ones…
Being open and transparent is key in my opinion for any successful project. I would add a recommendation to include…
Thank you for organizing this consultation. It is a demonstration that you practice what you preach 🙂 This principle is…
Forms and protocols for informed consent and similar need to be adapted for clearance from the part of ethic committees…
It is important that the extra time required is factored-in from start. Otherwise it may come as a surprise and…
With regards to this and all other principles, aspects of ethics and responsibility in all the research steps, must be…
OK with the principle. In the recommendations, I thinks “reflexivity” should be stressed more. E.g. Not only flexibility, but also…
To this I would like to add the concept of the evaluation champions/leaders/ambassadors (you can name it as you like).…
regarding this principle, I would foremost add the need to increase awareness about best practices related to personal data, e.g.…
I agree will all things mentioned under this principle. I would supplement with the need to communicate clearly and in…
I really like this one, but I would add some recommendations regarding the “letting go” of ownership from scientists or…
I love this one, super important. No comments.
I think this principle is the more specific to co-evaluation, while the rest could be standard principles for participatory research.…
I think this one is also very important, but I miss more recommendations about the empowerment aspect and how co-evaluation…
I like this one very much, and it’s already core to citizen science so it should definitively be part of…
Thanks for putting the focus on moderation. This is often underestimated and very important!
I think this one is also very important, but I miss more recommendations about the empowerment aspect and how co-evaluation should aim for actionable results. You name those aspects in the description of the principle but give no recommendation about this. And maybe why not name this one “Inclusivity and empowerment”? Or maybe leave here only the recommendations on inclusivity and make a new principle on the issues about empowerment and actionable results.
This is a really important one, but perhaps also the hardest to achieve. Those marginalized perspectives are often the ones who do not speak out. I really appreciate your recommendations here emphasizing the moderation skills needed and highlighting the importance of empathy and impartiality and maintaining a balanced perspective.
I would suggest adding an option here for collecting written-anonymized feedback. This could be collected in advanced, and discussed during sessions, or collected after discussions from those who did not feel comfortable expressing their views aloud.
I think the focus on power is so important, particularly when working with young people, and the power balances that are associated with that. A further option to the key ones discussed is allowing anonymous and private feedback, for those not comfortable with open feedback. Also having a clear process to discuss or enact any key points from the evaluation so the reflection is worthwhile.