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Short Abstract

The case study reports how a university‑based CS seminar mobilised locally anchored knowledge from older adults through a particapatory World Café and translated it into an authority‑ready report. It details influence pathways, enabling conditions, main obstacles, and practical lessons.

Abstract

The case study, "Co-Evaluating Hamburg’s Age-Friendly City Action Plan with Older Citizens," demonstrates how a regular university B.A. course, "Introduction to Citizen Science," transformed a World Café with older citizens into a policy-ready brief that informed the evaluation of Hamburg’s Age-Friendly City public health action plan for public administrators. The study traces how proximate, experiential evidence was transformed into administratively legible recommendations through three processes: co-defined questions with civil servants, synthesis in formats used by authorities, and a facilitated handover via a university transfer unit. Key enablers included place-based participation, simple inclusive methods, early scoping of timelines and responsibilities, and clear roles for students, citizens, experts, and civil servants, which helped sustain trust and follow-through. Constraints included mismatched academic and bureaucratic calendars, a tight turnaround time for processing data, and balancing ambitious evidence-informed goals with the realities of available resources for implementation. Practical lessons include keeping analyses and evaluations concise for timely adoption, making responsibilities transparent to all stakeholders, and maintaining feedback channels to support ongoing (policy) learning. The case study also demonstrates that shifting evidence work from central offices to citizenship-based participation can incorporate lived experience into public health policies. (The submission aligns with the panel’s remit and can be developed into a manuscript for the linked special collection in Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.)