Individual and Group Discussions
Discussing the research findings with contributors is a valuable opportunity to check the analysis with participating communities and identify omissions or unconscious biases, including the researcher’s own blind spots.
It is also important for accountability, especially in collaborative processes, where the knowledge is co-created and community owned. In such cases, co-authorship of research findings may be considered appropriate, see e.g. CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy).
The discussion process has the potential to provide new information and understandings of the material gathered through other techniques.
- A draft of the report was shared with participants who had indicated that they would like to see the outcomes and provided contact details.
- A timeframe for comments was set (normally around 3 weeks) with the offer of various means to comment or feedback.
- Discussions took place either in writing (over email or on social media), by phone, or at online/in-person meetings.
- New information arising from these review processes was incorporated into the final site reports and considered as part of the wider analysis.
- Once finalised, the reports were made available to participants and uploaded to open access store for future reference.
- The opportunity for discussion was offered to all participants and, where possible, reflecting on the research findings with community members proved to be extremely useful.
- The presentation of the social values was not always in the terms used by respondents, so the discussion was key in checking the reports captured the sense and feeling of the community understandings of place.
- Email comments tended to focus on specific points of factual accuracy or be general validations or appreciation for the report.
- Verbal interaction resulted in very different sorts of comments, providing the time and space for questions about the research process, to probe potential gaps, and for community members to share new information with the researcher and, in group meetings, with each other.
- The mode of discussion adopted was largely reflective of the degree of collaboration seen throughout the rest of the research process and reflective of the duration of engagement and depth of relationships that developed.
Citizen Juries
In a decision-making scenario, an option that could be considered is sharing the assessment findings with a citizen jury.
A citizen jury is convened specifically in order to make a decision or recommendation. Members of the jury (between 12 and 16 people) are drawn from across the various communities in representative proportions and discuss the material presented to them.