Collaborative Research: Participatory Technology Assessment and Cultures of Expertise in the U.S. Federal Government

This award supports a research project that studies efforts to democratize expertise in the context of federal agency decision-making. It investigates whether and how participatory technology assessments have change expert cultures at NASA, NOAA, and DOE. Very little is known about how participatory technology assessments, which are public engagement exercises where different stakeholder groups (including citizen organizations, state systems, and non-government agencies) interact with technical scientist and technical expert groups, impact agency decision-making processes and the ways that technical experts think about lay citizens. The case studies of federal government agencies and their participatory technology assessment practices that are to be developed in this project have the potential to inform how numerous types of technical experts plan and implement such assessments in practice; it will result in practical lessons learned for improving future collaborations. Beyond academic publications and conference presentations, the results of this study will be used to develop a best practices handbook for effective collaboration between boundary organizations that specialize in public engagement and government agencies. Results will be presented at the Arizona State Consortium for Science Policy Outcomes seminar series in Washington, DC, which has a long history of engaging local and federal agencies, NGOs, and academics interested in the practical application of research.

This research project will use a combination of in-depth interviews and document analysis to assess whether and how participatory technology assessments lead to reflexive changes in expert views on public input and knowledge, including how experts perceive and implement public engagement practices in decision making. The research team has access to technical expert decision-makers in the U.S. federal government context. As a result, the study will be able to address fundamental knowledge gaps in the public engagement and expertise literature. It will provide a comparative, applied account of federal agency expert reflections on their participation in the adoption, framing, and implementation of participatory technology assessment and the integration of assessment results into decision-making processes. It will bring to light how particular federal agency experts and expert groups are influenced by and challenge the assessment process, and it will explore the extent to which such assessments serve the role of a reflexive learning device for technical expert decision-makers. It may also serve to substantiate existing theories in the public engagement and expertise literature that merely postulates improvements in decision making processes and techno-scientific cultural change through public engagement exercises.

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.