An Innovative Online Tool to Self-evaluate and Compare Participatory Research Projects Labelled as Science Shops or Citizen Science

Participatory research keeps expanding to connect science and society through engaging projects using a multi-stakeholder strategy, including citizens. However, each participatory project follows different evaluation formats and strategies. This results in limiting evidences on best practices, hindering the scaling up of Participatory Research. Through the H2020-funded InSPIRES project, an innovative and online-based evaluation strategy was developed which is valid for Participatory Research initiatives labelled as Science Shops or Citizen Science. This strategy challenges those teams that want to undergo a self-reflection process during and after their project is active. An online-tool gathers and automatically analyses data in a harmonized way among projects. The tool delivers back a set of pieces of information through different visualizations which analyze each project’s process in five dimensions, selected-constructed after a careful revision of public engagement and impact evaluation criteria proposed by different projects and researchers. The dimensions evaluated by this online instrument are: (i) Knowledge Democracy, (ii) Citizen-led Research, (iii) Participatory Dynamics, (iv) Integrity, and (v) Transformative Change. Online-based self-evaluation questionnaires were designed and personalized according to the profile of the respondents and are sent out by email in four different stages to capture the momentum of the project, as well as its short-term and mid-term impacts. The quantitative and qualitative evaluation instrument is featured within the InSPIRES Open Platform (OP) which becomes an open repository that allows comparison among participatory projects.