Participatory foresight for technology assessment

Abstract

Technology assessment (TA) frequently uses forward-looking methods to anticipate socio-technical changes and their corresponding implications to deduce advice for policy and society. In recent years, participatory methods have increasingly been applied to identify the expectations of society towards future technologies. In this context, several TA projects have developed, applied and adapted a participatory foresight method to engage citizens as well as other actor groups into co-generating advice for research and innovation agenda setting in a standardized process; namely, the multi-perspective and multi-step CIVISTI method (Citizens’ Visions on Science, Technology and Innovation). Over the course of the past ten years, about 560 lay citizens without specialised knowledge on technology and innovation and 610 experts and stakeholders have taken part in these processes of co-generation of knowledge. In this contribution, we use our experience with this method and elaborate some criteria for the evaluation of knowledge co-generation and mutual learning in participatory foresight processes within TA.

Keywords

• technology assessment
• participatory foresight
• co-creation of knowledge
• mutual learning
• evaluation criteria