Facilitation and evaluation of participation: the role of social science methods

In this symposium, we would like to explore the role of social science methods in designing, facilitating and evaluating participatory processes. Questions that will be covered are: Why are social science methods important for participatory processes? What kind of social science methods are relevant in this regard? What does this mean for the role of the social scientist? What kind of empirical applications are there, and what can we learn from them?

This symposium will precede the PhD graduation of Eefje Cuppen.

To register, please send an email with subject "symposium participation" to: e.h.w.j.cuppen@tudelft.nl

The full programme is available for download HERE.

The importance of stakeholder participation for dealing with unstructured policy issues, for instance sustainable production and consumption or the transition to a sustainable energy supply, is widely recognized. A common notion is that the involvement of diverse perspectives on the problem at hand is necessary for learning about the problem and to develop new insights for dealing with the problem. A stakeholder dialogue does however not automatically include and benefit from the broad range of stakeholder perspectives.

This has implications for the way participatory processes are designed, documented and evaluated. Firstly, this concerns implications for stakeholder sampling: how to select stakeholders in such a way that the diversity of viewpoints, knowledge and ideas is covered in a dialogue? Secondly, this concerns implications for the design and facilitation of a participatory process. All kinds of mechanisms exist that hamper an open exploration of divergent viewpoints and knowledge claims. How to make sure that, once a diversity of viewpoints is included in the process, these have an equal opportunity to play a role in the dialogue? Thirdly, this concerns implications for the evaluation of participatory processes: how to asses the quality and effect of participatory processes and methodologies?