EAGER: Equity in Scientific Co-production Processes: Creation of a Framework

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Federal agencies increasingly fund programs that encourage, or even require, research to be “co-produced” by both scientists and stakeholders. However, there is little guidance for researchers and agencies for how to do this work and evaluate its outcomes, especially when communities with low levels of resource access, social capital, and/or a history of discrimination and exclusion are involved. Since the 1990s, the U.S. federal government has established climate research and decision-support programs to produce science that informs local, regional, and national policies. This project will leverage the experiences and perspectives of scientists and stakeholders who have worked with these programs to lend insights for the development of co-production processes that facilitate equitable partnerships with communities. By focusing on key federal programs and working in collaboration with an advisory board of agency staff and national organizations that support social justice, the project increases its transformative potential and likelihood of broader impacts to science policy and government investments.This early-concept research will develop a framework for addressing equity concerns in the coproduction of knowledge. Employing Q methodology techniques, the study will identify common discourses among U.S. regional climate science center scientists, stakeholders, and partners in governance,such as tribal nations. These data—collected through interviews and a survey—will serve as an initial draft of the framework to be vetted at a workshop held with coproduction scholars, representatives of historically underserved communities, federal agency program managers, and the interviewed co-production scientist and stakeholder groups. Publication of a special journal issue on equity and co-production will follow the workshop. The project will contribute to the development of co-production and related literatures by empirically establishing differences in the ways that its processes and outcomes may be perceived, connecting normative and descriptive strands of a multidisciplinary field that crosses public administration, sustainability science, and science and technology studies (STS).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.