TY - JOUR
T1 - Designing Participatory Technology Assessments
T2 - A Reflexive Method for Advancing the Public Role in Science Policy Decision-making
AU - Kaplan, Leah R.
AU - Farooque, Mahmud
AU - Sarewitz, Daniel
AU - Tomblin, David
N1 - Funding Information:
Process: The cooperative agreement represented a departure from a standard federal agency research grant. The nature of the agreement, which required that NASA remain involved, fostered collaboration on the deliberation design. The project also provided an opportunity for us to follow-up on all six of our WWViews Biodiversity lessons learned and innovate on the WWViews method. We first instituted tighter screening to limit space experts and advocates. Second, NASA sought to understand the reasoning processes that participants used in arriving at their individual and group selections. We altered the WWViews deliberation design, adding collection of qualitative data via written rationales for individual and group votes, notes from table observers, and transcripts of table audio recordings to meet this need. These qualitative data allowed us to construct narrative descriptions of table discussions. NASA program managers found these narratives beneficial for countering criticisms that citizen preferences for one technology pathway over another stemmed from a lack of understanding. As a third innovation, we promoted more active engagement during the deliberation by introducing several discussion aids and group activity boards. Fourth and finally, NASA experts participated in the deliberation through a mediated and virtual expert question and answer session.
Funding Information:
The authors would like to acknowledge Richard Sclove, David Guston, Larry Bell, David Rabkin, Darlene Cavalier, David Rejeski, and David Sittenfeld, who brought together the founding organizations of the ECAST network. These founding members were joined by the authors and other scholars and practitioners in different stages of its development, in various capacities and on a variety of projects. Prominent among them are (in alphabetical order) Ira Bennett, Jason Delborne, Zachary Pirtle, Gretchen Schwarz, Nicholas Weller, and Richard Worthington in the U.S.; Bjorn Bedsted in Denmark; and Yves Mathieu in France. We would also like to acknowledge the critical contributions to this research made by faculty, students, and staff at ASU Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes (CSPO) and forum staff at the Museum of Science (MOS). Finally, we would like to thank our two anonymous reviewers for their feedback and suggestions that strengthened this article. U.S. National Science Foundation's support of the Center for Nanotechnology and Society at Arizona State University (CNS-ASU) and the Nanotechnology Informal Science Education Network (NISENet) at the Museum of Science (MOS) were pivotal in seeding the initiatives that led to the formation of ECAST in 2010. ASU and MOS continue to provide significant funding and in-kind support to sustain, expand and continue research, education and outreach activities of the network. The projects discussed as mini cases in this paper were supported by funding from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NNX14AF95A), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NA15SEC0080005), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE0638102205), the Kettering Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2017?9921), and the Charles Koch Foundation.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2021/10
Y1 - 2021/10
N2 - Decades of social science scholarship have documented and explored the interconnected nature of science, technology, and society. Multiple theoretical frameworks suggest the potential to direct this process of mutual shaping toward desired outcomes and away from undesired ones through broader inclusion of new voices and visions. In 2010, a group of researchers, educators, and policy practitioners established the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) network to operationalize these frameworks. Over the course of a decade, ECAST developed an innovative and reflexive participatory technology assessment (pTA) method to support democratic science policy decision-making in different technical, social, and political contexts. The method's reflexive nature gave rise to continuous innovations and iterative improvements. The current ECAST pTA method includes three participatory phases: 1) Problem Framing; 2) ECAST Citizen Deliberation; and 3) Results and Integration. Proving adaptable and replicable, the method has generated outputs for decision-making on a variety of science and technology issues and at governance scales ranging from the local to the national and international. ECAST's distributed network model has also promoted independence, continuity, and sustainability through changing sociopolitical contexts. In this paper, we detail the current state of the ECAST pTA method; share mini case studies to illustrate circumstances that prompted new method innovations; and offer a vision for further developing and integrating pTA into democratic science policy decision-making.
AB - Decades of social science scholarship have documented and explored the interconnected nature of science, technology, and society. Multiple theoretical frameworks suggest the potential to direct this process of mutual shaping toward desired outcomes and away from undesired ones through broader inclusion of new voices and visions. In 2010, a group of researchers, educators, and policy practitioners established the Expert and Citizen Assessment of Science and Technology (ECAST) network to operationalize these frameworks. Over the course of a decade, ECAST developed an innovative and reflexive participatory technology assessment (pTA) method to support democratic science policy decision-making in different technical, social, and political contexts. The method's reflexive nature gave rise to continuous innovations and iterative improvements. The current ECAST pTA method includes three participatory phases: 1) Problem Framing; 2) ECAST Citizen Deliberation; and 3) Results and Integration. Proving adaptable and replicable, the method has generated outputs for decision-making on a variety of science and technology issues and at governance scales ranging from the local to the national and international. ECAST's distributed network model has also promoted independence, continuity, and sustainability through changing sociopolitical contexts. In this paper, we detail the current state of the ECAST pTA method; share mini case studies to illustrate circumstances that prompted new method innovations; and offer a vision for further developing and integrating pTA into democratic science policy decision-making.
KW - Citizen deliberation
KW - Decision-making
KW - Participatory technology assessment (pTA)
KW - Reflexivity
KW - Responsible innovation
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U2 - 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120974
DO - 10.1016/j.techfore.2021.120974
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85109041740
SN - 0040-1625
VL - 171
JO - Technological Forecasting and Social Change
JF - Technological Forecasting and Social Change
M1 - 120974
ER -