The People’s Principles for Public Involvement in R&D

Paul Manners

Co-director, National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE)

The People’s Vision for R&D was a public dialogue project CaSE commissioned to explore society’s stake in R&D. The project was run by the National Centre for Social Research and the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement. Here, NCCPE Co-director, Paul Manners, blogs about his experience of the project, and shares some personal lessons learned.

30 Sep 2024

Meet Kathryn Cooper: a retired nurse, Kathryn was one of 33 members of the public who were recruited to take part in a public dialogue commissioned by CaSE (the Campaign for Science and Engineering). The dialogue was part of CaSE’s Discovery Decade programme which has been working to better understand public attitudes to R&D. The project has involved lots of detailed polling and research and has produced fascinating insights which you can explore here on the CaSE site.

The polling identified a conundrum. Despite all the efforts that the sector has made to share the benefits of R&D with the public, the level of political support that CaSE discovered was only lukewarm: people valued R&D, and could see it was important, but when push came to shove people were not prepared to stand up for it as a priority for investment.

The Discovery Decade team realised that they needed to move beyond polling and focus groups to better understand why people felt disconnected, and what – if anything – might help to shift the relationship to one where people felt more ownership.

When the ‘People’s Vision’ project was put out to tender, we couldn’t resist bidding to help deliver it. Given the NCCPE’s interest in public engagement, we were very keen to support this kind of committed, thoughtful listening exercise. We reached out to the National Centre for Social Research to partner with us, whose centre for deliberative research is a sector-leader in designing deliberative processes.

And that’s when the adventure began. You can find out more about what happened on the project page and in this short film that we have produced to share some of the key findings.

A roller coaster ride

It’s been a roller coaster project – forcing us to confront first hand some of the structural barriers that make meaningful involvement with R&D so hard to realise. But at the same time it has been exhilarating – the dialogue created a safe space for the contributors to ‘dare to dream’ about what could be done to tackle the disconnection CaSE’s work has so effectively highlighted.

Perhaps the most profound learning for me from the exercise – and the most challenging – was to recognise the journey we still need to travel to really engage people with research. The NCCPE has been in existence for over 15 years and with our many colleagues and collaborators we have worked hard to make the case for engagement and to support universities to take it more seriously.

And there have been wonderful things to celebrate.

But the CaSE polling has revealed that these efforts are still failing to reach a critical mass – and this group of people, chosen with great care to be representative of the UK population, and to have a range of attitudes towards R&D – were almost universally aligned with the CaSE findings. They didn’t think R&D wasn’t important – but, personally, they felt little meaningful connection to it. This is hard to confront, but important to acknowledge.

Kathryn, one of our contributors, put it simply and succinctly, reflecting on how she felt at the start of the process:

I think people see research as experts, people that know scientists, universities, and perhaps a bit frightened of it, a bit scared, feel that they’re going to be out of their depth. They’re not going to know what people are talking about. And perhaps they feel that they don’t have a contribution to make.

Lightbulb moments

Things really started to change once participants were given the chance to actually meet people working in R&D – funding it, doing it, supporting engagement. And to hear about a host of different projects from across the disciplinary landscape and touching on all kinds of topics, from emotions to energy use.

Kunal was another participant – his day job is for HMRC as a data analyst. What was interesting in Kunal’s experience of the dialogue wasn’t that he shifted from feeling neutral or uninterested in R&D – he says that he came into the process feeling positive. But what resolved for him was that he now felt a much deeper understanding and commitment to the role it can play in helping humanity. He reflected:

My overall outlook still was positive but it was more reinforced: there was actual reasoning behind it, if you like

The NCCPE has produced two short films to introduce you to Kathryn and to Kunal, where you can hear in their own words what the process has meant to them. Do please take a look – and hear their reflections on the journey they travelled over the course of the project.

Some personal lessons learned

What I loved about the project as that all of us were on a journey of discovery. I found my own understanding of engagement challenged and deepened by taking part in the process, and I have shared these in a linked blog on the NCCPE’s website.

Most refreshing was to be in the company of people who don’t do engagement for a living – but who demonstrated a deep critical interest in its purpose and character.
So what next

So what next

The project has developed four People’s Principles that outline how this group felt people could and should be involved in R&D. These reinforce many other good practice principles – but what is particularly exciting about them is that they focus specifically on public involvement in R&D as a whole – rather than on specific areas of research (like health) or specific topics (like AI).

Because of this, they provide a powerful platform for the whole R&D sector to mobilise behind – and it is great that an advocacy organization like CaSE is throwing their weight behind them, and publishing a set of recommendations which they will promote widely.

I thought I should leave Kathryn to have the final word: