CONCISE standard public consultations book published

ANA SERRA// The CONCISE consortium has published the standard of the process of organising the five citizen consultations that took place between September and November 2019 in Italy, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Portugal. The consultations had the aim of finding out the role of science communication in the knowledge and perception of European citizens about scientific topics.

The book, available under a Creative Common license, describes the first stage of the research. It details the entire organisation process: descriptions of how each one of the consultations was organised and staged, in addition to the scripts used in the different activities and the informed consents signed by both the participating citizens and the facilitators. It offers, in the end, useful guidelines for developing similar activities involving the citizenry.

The five public consultations 

The book consists of six chapters dedicated to each of the consultations, which also includes the pilot consultation that took place in Barcelona in March 2019 and based on which the citizen consultations were organised.

One of the essential aspects to guarantee the success of the project was to ensure a diverse sample of society. For this reason, the communication campaigns carried out in the months prior to the consultations have been of fundamental importance. Thus, taking into account the particularities of each state, in each of the chapters of the book each partner has collected the most relevant details of the organisation of the consultations.

The book offers useful guides for developing similar activities that involve citizens. Each of the five chapters are dedicated one consultation, which allows readers to know in detail the particularities of organization in each country

The book also includes the activities carried out by the citizens who participated in the consultations. In addition, the annexes offer readers fundamental aspects of the citizen consultations such as informed consents and online registration forms completed by citizens.

It is available under Creative Common license on the project website and on the ScienceFlows website.

Translation: Amaia Crespo