Send message to Authors

Short Abstract

Citizen science needs impact evaluation beyond traditional metrics. We explore arts-based performative methods to capture holistic outcomes, including emotional, aesthetic and physical aspects, from a pilot in public health and transfer it to a new participatory Alzheimer’s project in rural Austria.

Abstract

Engaging and involving citizens in research is gaining more ground, shifting power dynamics between citizens, communities and researchers. Demonstrating the value or impact of such initiatives through more traditional impact metrics, such as bibliometric indicators, would not paint a comprehensive picture. Even qualitative evaluation methods of capturing change, such as interviews, create a power asymmetry between interviewer and interviewee and focus only on verbal aspects. We are exploring arts-based approaches, such as performative methods, to overcome these challenges. Our aim is to create a more inclusive space to capture (positive and negative) impacts as well as focus on emotional, physical and aesthetic aspects within citizen science contexts.

We are building our experience on a pilot final reflection format we conducted in November 2024 in the context of five public health citizen science projects which ended last year. We collaborated with artists who used performative methods to capture a more holistic perspective of the project outcomes. We will expand on this pilot reflection format in a new citizen science project, called “Ankerpunkte” (“Anchor Points”), involving people with Alzheimer's disease in a rural region in Austria. Our objective is to explore the possibility of a formative impact evaluation using arts-based approaches (as opposed to the summative approach for the pilot reflection format), as well as to meaningfully include the vulnerable groups. We want to discuss our current experiences, including the benefits and challenges we perceived, our plans to go further and the broader context what impact in citizen science means.