Citizen science: generating ideas and exploring consensus

  • 16 August 2018

Contributors

Why it matters

All research starts with a good idea, and that idea doesn’t have to come from ‘traditional’ researchers. Citizen science has empowered new voices to shape research by contributing ideas and helping make decisions.

From Starbucks to the NHS, organisations are using citizen science to generate ideas and explore consensus among people from diverse backgrounds. Idea generation platforms can help collect ideas from thousands of participants, and consensus exploring tools can help build agreement among large groups of people on a particular topic.   

THIS Institute’s third report on citizen science builds on previous reports about crowdsourcing for research and crowdsourcing for systematic reviews. It provides an overview of platforms and tools for generating ideas and building consensus, describes how they have been used in various  initiatives, and looks at their potential in healthcare improvement research.

What we did

We gathered evidence for this report from the relevant academic literature, policy reports and non-peer-reviewed studies. We also interviewed five experts in idea generation and consensus exploration tools.

What we found

Download the report

 

Related content from our open-access series, Elements of Improving Quality and Safety in Healthcare

Collaboration-Based Approaches

Co-Producing and Co-Designing

 

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