Periodic Reporting for period 1 - POIESIS (Probing the impact of integrity and integration on societal trust in science)
Período documentado: 2022-09-01 hasta 2023-08-31
The POIESIS project brings together seven partners from across Europe, who will study the impact of research integrity issues and societal engagement practices on trust in science.
POIESIS will create viable pathways to achieving its intended scientific and societal impacts through an extensive research programme, which involves a comprehensive and diverse set of stakeholders, including mediating actors, citizens, institutional communication and integrity officers, and R&I policy makers. The empirical objective is to systematically examine the interrelatedness of integrity, integration, and trust, and the role of institutions in fostering a research climate that is conducive to societal trust in science.
As societal dependence on sound scientific research and responsible innovation has become increasingly visible, concerns about public trust and mistrust in science have simultaneously been mounting. This highlights the crucial importance of the cultural authority of science. The debate about societal trust in science is characterised by three intuitively appealing assumptions:
• First, that trust depends on scientists’ capacity to demonstrate high standards of research integrity and ethics, and that breaches of research integrity will lead to mistrust.
• Second, that citizens’ and civil society’s involvement in co-creating research agendas and content makes research more relevant and responsive to society and consequently strengthens trust.
• Third, that institutions can foster integrity and societal integration by enabling and supporting researchers to act responsibly.
While these assumptions seem plausible, supporting evidence is scarce and inconclusive. In POIESIS, we therefore aim to question and study these assumptions. POIESIS’ research objective is to understand how and to what extent societal trust in science, research and innovation is affected by the alignment of research practices with principles of research integrity and by the integration of citizens and societal stakeholders in different phases of the research cycle.
POIESIS aims to build a knowledge base about the linkages of research practices and societal trust in science, providing targeted scientific and policy recommendations for designated user groups about tackling societal mistrust in science and strengthening the co-creation of research and innovation contents by society.
POIESIS will create viable pathways to achieving its intended scientific and societal impacts through an extensive research programme, which involves a comprehensive and diverse set of stakeholders, including mediating actors, citizens, institutional communication and integrity officers, and R&I policy makers. The empirical objective is to systematically examine the interrelatedness of integrity, integration, and trust, and the role of institutions in fostering a research climate that is conducive to societal trust in science.
As societal dependence on sound scientific research and responsible innovation has become increasingly visible, concerns about public trust and mistrust in science have simultaneously been mounting. This highlights the crucial importance of the cultural authority of science. The debate about societal trust in science is characterised by three intuitively appealing assumptions:
• First, that trust depends on scientists’ capacity to demonstrate high standards of research integrity and ethics, and that breaches of research integrity will lead to mistrust.
• Second, that citizens’ and civil society’s involvement in co-creating research agendas and content makes research more relevant and responsive to society and consequently strengthens trust.
• Third, that institutions can foster integrity and societal integration by enabling and supporting researchers to act responsibly.
While these assumptions seem plausible, supporting evidence is scarce and inconclusive. In POIESIS, we therefore aim to question and study these assumptions. POIESIS’ research objective is to understand how and to what extent societal trust in science, research and innovation is affected by the alignment of research practices with principles of research integrity and by the integration of citizens and societal stakeholders in different phases of the research cycle.
POIESIS aims to build a knowledge base about the linkages of research practices and societal trust in science, providing targeted scientific and policy recommendations for designated user groups about tackling societal mistrust in science and strengthening the co-creation of research and innovation contents by society.
In this first reporting period, POIESIS has reached all of its stated tasks and deliverables for the stipulated time frame. While still in an early phase, the comprehensive empirical programme has been initiated. All study designs, including methodological approaches and sample/recruitment strategies have been carefully described in three separate and designated research protocols (officially accessible reports) concerning: a) the stocktaking and analysis of existing data streams on citizen trust and design of three expert workshops; b) the design of three across country studies including deliberative workshops, expert interviews and survey experiments focusing on ‘chains of mediation’ and on the intersection of integrity, trust and integration, and c) participatory actions including an across-country focus group study and open deliberative roundtable workshops in which institutional stakeholders actively co-create knowledge and policy recommendations about the ways in which institutions can help create fertile conditions for responsible research practices.
In addition to completing all study protocols, main achievements for the first reporting period include:
• The production of a dataset on core time-series items and additionally an analysis of these items, national reports for each of the POIESIS partner countries based on national survey data, and a literature review collecting empirical evidence for the interrelation of POIESIS’ core concepts (WP1)
• The completion of the first of three expert workshops bringing together European experts of attitudes to science surveys across Europe to discuss conceptual, technical and methodological aspects of examining and measuring trust in science (WP1)
• The formation of a project-based Permanent Recruitment and Engagement Working Group (PREWG) and the completion of an overall sample- and recruitment strategy for the project studies (WP 4)
• The accomplishment of public deliberative workshops conducted in all seven partner countries which have involved a total number of 169 European citizens to deliberate on trust in science, science communication and public engagement through case discussions on COVID-19 and climate science-related topics. National data have been coded and analysed and reported in individual national reports. An across-case analysis of the seven deliberative workshops and study data have been completed after the first reporting period (WP2).
In addition to completing all study protocols, main achievements for the first reporting period include:
• The production of a dataset on core time-series items and additionally an analysis of these items, national reports for each of the POIESIS partner countries based on national survey data, and a literature review collecting empirical evidence for the interrelation of POIESIS’ core concepts (WP1)
• The completion of the first of three expert workshops bringing together European experts of attitudes to science surveys across Europe to discuss conceptual, technical and methodological aspects of examining and measuring trust in science (WP1)
• The formation of a project-based Permanent Recruitment and Engagement Working Group (PREWG) and the completion of an overall sample- and recruitment strategy for the project studies (WP 4)
• The accomplishment of public deliberative workshops conducted in all seven partner countries which have involved a total number of 169 European citizens to deliberate on trust in science, science communication and public engagement through case discussions on COVID-19 and climate science-related topics. National data have been coded and analysed and reported in individual national reports. An across-case analysis of the seven deliberative workshops and study data have been completed after the first reporting period (WP2).