Embedding Public Engagement in Research

At a Connecting Science workshop in August, Charlotte Thorley, a freelance public engagement expert (@cprthorley) took us through how to embed public engagement in scientific research.

What should public engagement be?

Public engagement is a broad church and can include the following elements:

• Collaborating, consulting, informing/inspiring
• Opening up research findings
• Inclusion of the public in dialogue and practice
• Can lead to improved research impact
• Should be anchored to reward and recognition

Some examples of embedded public engagement

Charlotte has been involved in embedded public engagement that helped to design a helmet and activities for child participants in medical treatments and studies. Galaxy Zoo is a well known platform where citizen scientists can work on astronomical data together with researchers. A search for green pea galaxies led to a collaborative paper through an ongoing dialogue between researchers and the public.

The key to both of these examples was finding an area of established trust. A similar collaboration emerged at Queen Mary University London through a study on why children are afraid of the dentist. The study started out as a partnership between the drama and dental departments, where children could pretend to be dentists. Researchers worked out that their fear was learnt from their parents, and this led to a research exercise closely linked to the local schools. In future, it will be much easier to engage the drama and dental departments in public engagement as they directly experienced the value it added to their work.

When to engage

It is never too soon to build public engagement into your research process, and also never too late. The research cycle doesn’t really end, so neither does engagement. Even late in the process, it can help future proof your research for new grants.

Public engagement helps to inform:

• How you shape your research
• How you deliver your research
• How you share your research

The challenge is to move beyond your comfort zone in how you engage with audiences, whether that is through talks, festivals or school visits. Don’t forget that if you engage with young people as an audience, you also reach their parents and wider community as well.

Engagement to shape research

Advantages of using to engagement to share your research include:

• Engagement can set new directions for research e.g. conversations with MS patients led to research into exercise
• Funding e.g. can help to identify new funding sources, or engage with funders while designing your research
• Emphasis and importance e.g. can tell you which area of your research has the most public interest
• Usability improved
• Public interest raised

Engagement to deliver

Public engagement can also assist in the research delivery phase:

• Facilitate approval through lay panels and ethics boards and recruitment of advisory boards
• Improve the strength of your approach, including different ways of looking at your processes
• Increase access to data e.g. patient data, surveys
• Speed up processing data e.g. citizen science
• Improve the quality of materials and processes – bring in outside views

Engagement to share

Engagement at the end of the research process can help with:

• Adoption of your findings
• Awareness of your work
• Valuing your work
• Promoting your work
• Building understanding
• Protecting futures

Planning public engagement

Plan the engagement as you plan your research and make it work for you. It is helpful to use current work to seed the next projects. For example, you might run a pilot before trying a larger scale event. Make sure that you resource it properly – public engagement needs investment of cash, time and people. Public engagement should be a team effort, so don’t rely on the same people every time.

Engagement skills

Public engagement can build your skill sets, both within research and beyond it. Reflect on how public engagement has informed your research skills, or other skills you are trying to develop. These skills might include public speaking, pitching ideas, fundraising, budget and time management, people management, teaching and writing. Don’t do it alone – find collaborators and support from colleagues.

Engagement benefits

The benefits of public engagement can be wide-ranging. These can contribute to annual reviews, funder reports and applications for future research or public engagement funding. You may also be able to contribute to press and internal communications work. Along the way you can win awards and raise your profile, sometimes nationally.

Talk about the engagement you’ve done in articles, research papers, seminars and team meetings. Public engagement is not always plain sailing, so reflect on the downsides of what you have tried so far and identify what would you do differently next time. Sometimes it’s OK to say no if you’re too busy or it’s a repeat of what you have done before. Push yourself out of your comfort zone and you may be surprised at what you can achieve!

Gender Summit 2019, Amsterdam: Identifying concrete measures for change

In Amsterdam last week, gender and inclusion professionals gathered for the 17^th Gender Summit. Ingrid van Engelshoven, Minister for Education Culture and Sport introduced the three themes for the event, which chimed with her ambitions for Dutch science policy: national frameworks to advance gender balance, diversity and inclusion; fostering diversity in open science and AI to connect science to society; actions towards a team-driven, innovative academic culture.

For van Engelshoven, there are two points to bear in mind to achieve gender equality. “We should judge research institutes by their gender equality and assume gender equality is the norm.” She cited the example of Emily Warren Roebling’s largely unsung contribution to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York after her engineer husband developed caisson disease. “Let’s not take 14 years to build bridges to equality,” she urged. “I am looking for very concrete measures we can take now, not in 10 years time.”

Mind the gap

Belle Derks of Utrecht University was the first speaker to rise to the challenge by identifying a number of ‘gender gaps’. “In Europe, the gender pay gap in academia is about 800 Euros. Age is a large factor in this as 50% of women drop out earlier in their careers. However, we actually see the widest gap at the highest pay grades.” Derks reported that there was no evidence that women negotiate less for their pay. “In fact, their more precarious employment often means that they negotiate more.”

Women at higher grades also report they spend more time teaching and have fewer resources in terms of staff, budget and equipment, leading to a ‘resources gap’. When men look ‘up’, they see people at the top like them. For others, the lack of role models can correspond to a ‘belongingness gap’.

Unconsciously, we expect women to be communal and men to be agentic and tend to dislike those who do not conform to these stereotypes. Simply trying to be more agentic is not as effective for women and taking a communal approach is not as valued. Women feel a lack of fit, which can lead to less engagement, work exhaustion, lack of agency and higher turnover. “The concrete solution here is to control for masculine definitions of excellence, focus on team science and value a diverse set of qualities in our reward systems,” explained Derk.

Bias in a meritocracy

For Prof Simone Buitendijk of Imperial College London, universities need to recognise the pernicious effects of bias and accept that it exists. “It’s not about being nice to women and ethnic minorities, it’s about including all talent to tackle global challenges,” she insisted. “If you tell us bias is not true, how dare you!”

The pervasive nature of bias is at odds with scientific research as a meritocracy. For example, BAME students experience more mental health issues while studying, which can become a vicious circle, impacting their eventual results.

“Just like a canary in the coal mine, minorities suffer most from competitive, individualistic and vicious atmospheres,” she reminded us. “Generally, we are poor at measuring excellence. No one can achieve perfection, even the superstars.”

“We need to tackle the system, but not shame individuals – unless they are in denial!” she said. Buitendijk called for leaders to be strategic in their approach and not let equality and diversity become the topic they aim get to once everything else is fixed. “Don’t leave it to the lone diversity officer in their cubicle,” she urged to a rueful laugh from the audience. “If we blindly insist that research is a meritocracy, then people blame themselves for bias in the system.”

The success factors linked to sustainable change are outlined in LERU’s recent report: “Equality and diversity at universities: The power of a systemic approach.”

• Discover and include a wide range of students
• Realise the potential of all staff and students
• Enhance performance and well-being
• Create an attractive community for all
• Increase the quality of knowledge production
• Connect with societal challenges

“Leaders should understand the statistics, listen to individual stories and take a strategic response,” urged Buitendijk. Hopefully, everyone in the audience is here to do just that.