Antonella Passani, partner of T6, is co-author of the paper “A Participatory, multidimensional and modular impact assessment methodology for citizen science projects“, published in the fteval Journal, Issue #54, September 2022 – Participatory Evaluation and Impact Assessment in Citizen Science“.
ABSTRACT
This paper presents a multidimensional methodology for assessing the scientific, social, economic, political and environmental impacts of citizens science (CS) projects. Besides these five areas of impact, the methodology considers also the transformative potential of the CS projects, i.e. the degree to which a CS project can help to change, alter, or replace current systems, the business-as-usual, in one or more fields such as science production or environmental protection. The methodology is designed to be modular and flexible so to adapt to the specificities of different CS projects and offers operational tools for its use by non- experts. The paper also describes the co-design process followed for its development and discusses the main lessons learned as emerged during its testing with 16 citizen science projects.