RAPID: Collabortive Research: What Makes Lay/Expert Collaborations Succeed?

本项目为外行/专家合作研究或公民科学的因果分析奠定了基础。虽然这种合作在促进知识和社会福祉方面的潜力是众所周知的，但人们对它们成功或失败的原因知之甚少。pi建议通过采用一种超越传统观察研究的新方法来弥合这一差距。pi建议使用混合方法和创新的平行研究设计。他们将通过研究社会条件和过程来证明他们的方法的有效性，这些社会条件和过程产生或阻止了针对当前海湾石油灾难的变革性、社区驱动的科学。此外，他们计划通过结合环境科学家、社会科学家和在南路易斯安那州生活和工作的越南裔美国人的专业知识，产生关于灾难影响的跨学科和社会健全的环境知识，他们带来了对该地区的丰富经验。影响生态系统的科学工作。智力优势提议的研究是跨学科的。它旨在推进科学的基础社会研究，同时促进社会强大的环境科学的生产。它以两种并行分析的形式进行。第一个是社区驱动的湿地污染毒理学研究；第二部分是对协作过程的发起、发展和执行进行社会学分析。这两项研究都解决了实质性的重要问题。这项社区驱动的研究将调查石油碳氢化合物对鱼类的暴露及其影响，这些鱼类对依靠商业和自给渔业为生的越南裔美国人具有重要的文化和经济意义。居民和科学家将共同努力，确定目标物种和生物终点的优先顺序。这项研究的结果将提供可靠的数据，为未来以假设为导向的关于灾难长期生态影响的研究奠定基础。社会学研究将调查外行/专家的合作，以深入了解产生成功公民科学的因果过程。本研究产生的跨学科知识将通过捕获其他自然和社会科学家可以使用的具有时间敏感性的社会和生态数据，帮助科学努力调查石油灾难的社会和环境影响。该项目的社区驱动性质以及代表性不足的社会群体对知识生产的贡献有助于确保科学知识对墨西哥湾沿岸居民和地方政府以及致力于减轻灾害影响的州和联邦机构具有社会意义。该项目还提供了重要的教育机会。这些机会包括社会和自然科学家之间的跨学科交流机会，以及本科生和成年非科学家的研究培训机会。该项目还将加强杜兰大学和华盛顿州立大学之间的机构关系，弥合地区和公立/私立学院之间的分歧。最后，拟议的研究具有强大的潜力，为解决南路易斯安那州和其他地方的生态和环境健康问题建立一个有效和可持续的社区学术网络。

IntroductionThis project lays the foundations for a causal analysis of lay/expert collaborative research or citizen science. While the potential of such collaborations to advance knowledge and societal well-being are well known, little is known about what makes them succeed or fail. The PIs propose to bridge this gap by adopting a new approach that goes beyond traditional observational studies. The PIs propose to use mixed methods and an innovative parallel-study design. They will demonstrate the effectiveness of their approach by examining the social conditions and processes that produce or forestall transformative, community-driven science in response to the current Gulf oil disaster. In addition, they plan to produce interdisciplinary and socially robust environmental knowledge about the impacts of the disaster by combining the expertise of environmental scientists, social scientists, and Vietnamese-Americans living and working in south Louisiana who bring their deep experiential knowledge of the region?s impacted ecosystems to the scientific work. Intellectual MeritsThe proposed study is interdisciplinary. It is designed to advance basic social studies of science while simultaneously contributing to the production of socially robust environmental science. It does so in the form of two parallel analyses. The first is a community-driven toxicological study of wetlands contamination; the second is a sociological analysis of the initiation, development, and execution of that collaborative process. Both studies address substantively important problems. The community-driven study will investigate the exposure and impacts of petroleum hydrocarbons on finfish species that are culturally and economically important to Vietnamese-Americans whose livelihoods rely on commercial and subsistence fishing. Working together, residents and scientists will identify and prioritize target species and biological endpoints. The findings of the study will provide sound data that form the basis for hypothesis-driven future research on the long-term ecological impacts of the disaster. The sociological study will investigate the lay/expert collaboration for insight into the causal processes that generate successful citizen science. Potential Broader Impacts The interdisciplinary knowledge produced by this study will aid in scientific efforts to investigate the social and environmental impacts of the oil disaster by capturing time-sensitive social and ecological data that can be used by other natural and social scientists. The community-driven nature of the project and contributions to knowledge production by an underrepresented social group helps ensure that the scientific knowledge will be socially meaningful to Gulf Coast residents and local governments as well state and federal agencies working to mitigate disaster impacts. The project also holds significant educational opportunities. These include opportunities for interdisciplinary exchanges between social and natural scientists, and research training opportunities for undergraduate students and adult non-scientists. The project will also enhance institutional relationships between Tulane and Washington State Universities that bridge regional and public/private divides in the academy. Finally, the proposed study has strong potential to seed an effective and sustainable community-academic network for addressing ecological and environmental health issues in south Louisiana and elsewhere.