Session Information
15 SES 08 A, Analysing Partnerships
Paper Session
Contribution
In the last years, there is a clear and growing demand from governments and society for science to demonstrate relevant social impacts (Gómez et al., 2019). Social impact refers to social improvements achieved as a consequence of implementing the results of a particular research project or study (Pulido et al., 2018). This term represents positive steps towards the fulfillment of the officially defined social goals, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the EU 2020 Agenda. We have also testimonies that many citizens desire to be exposed to the social impact of scientific project outcomes so that their families, their communities, and themselves can make informed decisions in their everyday lives.
Within this context, scientists are increasingly encouraged to engage with, listen to, share their research outcomes with citizens, and consider the research and future plans from the perspective of the societal actors they serve (Aiello et al., 2020). However, even with many efforts done to engage societal actors in scientific development, there are still several barriers to citizens’ participation in science, such as the influence of each individual's specific personal situation, the possibility of lack of time, and the existence of other initiatives competing for the attention of volunteers (De Moor, 2019). Moreover, specific tools and strategies for discussing scientific evidences with and for society are still scarce. Thus, an urgent demand emerges which calls for the establishment of partnerships in education to achieve knowledge exchange and collaborative production of knowledge, as well as to provide more open-ended opportunities for diverse social actors to be involved in the achievement of research social impact.
This paper contributes to this challenge with the exploration of two recently created open-access participatory science-based platforms -ADHYAYANA and SAPPHO- to help diverse citizens to clarify and distinguish between science-based statements and hoaxes focused respectively on education and gender.
Method
The ADHYAYANA platform (https://socialimpactscience.org/education/) focuses on issues related to education. The SAPPHO platform (https://socialimpactscience.org/gender/) is focused on gender. Both platforms are built with a bottom-up approach that brings together not only researchers and practitioners, but all citizens, both to consult and to contribute to the debate on scientific evidence in these fields. On the basis of the voluntary principle, any individual can contribute by writing new posts or comments on the platform and others reply to his/her posts and comments. Posts are statements related to the Sustainable Development Goal of education. According to the rules described in the platform, each statement remains open for a period of 15 days for a dialogic open review. In a public debate, people can argue and provide either scientific evidence (articles published in scientific journals indexed in JCR/Scopus) or personal experiences. In this way, everyone can argue with others using scientific evidence until they reach a consensus and can be encouraged to look for scientific evidence. This is in line with the proposition of deliberative democracy which builds people’s capacity for choice based on dialogue, argument, and consensus (Sordé Martí et al. 2020). After the discussion period, the Board of the platform classifies the statement in one of four labels: “scientific evidence” (at least 3 scientific articles published in JCR/Scopus support it), “hoax” (at least 3 scientific articles published in JCR/Scopus demonstrate the statement is false), “scientific controversy” (conflicting scientific evidence), “need more evidence” . We have conducted a content analysis of both webs to analyse the number and nature of specific topics that have been under discussion, and the interactions around these specific topics.
Expected Outcomes
The Adhyayana platform has up to date (27/01/2021) 49 statements distributed in the following labels: Hoax (10), Needs more evidence (18), Scientific controversy (1), Scientific evidence (16), Under review (4). These statements cover a wide range of issues, among which: effective strategies for attending students with special education needs, bullying and violence at school, family participation, cultural diversity in education. The Sappho platform has (also up to 27/01/2021) 51 statements: Hoax (13), Needs more evidence (13), Scientific controversy (7), Scientific evidence (18). In both platforms, the number of comments and responses on each post ranges from 0 to 7. Significantly, the posts with less comments are those labelled as “scientific evidence”. Likewise, the debates analyzed are oriented towards resolving doubts and clarifying the available evidence. In a number of discussions, contributors start a post to raise a piece of information that have puzzled them and ask for evidences and arguments. Also, some participants show different points of view or complementary evidence on the same topic. Given that the public profiles of participants do not show whether they are researchers, professionals or citizens, comments are to be assessed on the basis of the arguments they bring to the table. Statistics on visits reflect the good reception of the initiatives. While first statements are from September 2020, the total number of visits for Adhyayana already exceeds 15,000 and the number of daily and weekly visits have increased in the analysed period (close to 4000 visits per seven days in 27/01/2021). All in all, these two participatory science-based platforms mean a new opportunity for establishing fruitful dialogues between different social actors committed with the goal of an equitable quality education for all. Data will be updated for further discussion.
References
Aiello, E., Donovan, C., Duque, E., Fabrizio, S., Flecha, R., Holm, P., Molina, S., Oliver, E., & Reale, E. (2020). Effective strategies that enhance the social impact of social sciences and humanities research. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice. https://doi.org/10.1332/174426420X15834126054137 De Moor, T., Rijpma, A., & Prats López, M. (2019). Dynamics of engagement in citizen science: results from the “yes, i do!” project.Citizen Science: Theory and Practice,4(1), 1-17. Gómez, A., Padrós, M., Ríos, O., Mara, L.-C., & Pukepuke, T. (2019). Reaching Social Impact Through Communicative Methodology. Researching With Rather Than on Vulnerable Populations: The Roma Case. Frontiers in Education, 4, 9. Pulido, C. M., Redondo-Sama, G., Sordé-Martí, T., & Flecha, R. (2018). Social impact in social media: A new method to evaluate the social impact of research. PloS One, 13(8), e0203117. Sordé Martí, T., Flecha, R., Rodríguez, J. A., & Bosch, J. L. C. (2020). Qualitative Inquiry: A Key Element for Assessing the Social Impact of Research. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800420938117ew method to evaluate the social impact of research. PloS One, 13(8), e0203117.
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