Toolkit protocol: Carrying out participant recruitment
Who can be involved in citizen engagement and participatory processes on pollinators? This might not be obvious, especially that the way that different groups are defined for the purposes of participatory processes might be different from what you are used to. Check out the definitions below
In this toolkit, we do not use the term ‘citizen’ with reference to formal citizenship granted through being a legally recognised inhabitant of certain country. Rather, citizens are all those who inhabit a place, whether it is a village, town, city or a country, who may directly or indirectly impact or be impacted by an issue – in our case, the decline of pollinators. Citizens come to participatory processes in their individual capacity. That means they do not represent a particular organisation or interest or even community; rather, they bring their own perspectives, opinions, visions and ideas, grounded in the way they experience the issue in their daily life. This experience can also be a source of valuable knowledge of how pollinators and their decline – as well as policies related to it – play out in daily lives.
This term refers to those who represent a particular interest group and have behind them some (more or less) organised power, which might be, for instance, an NGO, an association or a private company. Clearly, stakeholders are also citizens. And indeed, even someone who is a member of an association or an NGO (say, a farmer or an environmental activist) can be in various situations a stakeholder or a citizen. The determining factor for identifying their role in the engagement process is which 'hat' they wear when they take part in the process. This is often not easy to determine and not clear-cut: sometimes people might change 'hats' strategically throughout the process; other times, the different 'identities' blend into one another. In general, stakeholders will have a very deep understanding of the issue and at the same time a very strong and well-articulated commitment to a particular course of action. They can be involved to provide a perspective and knowledge on the issue from their particular domain, but their attachment to a specific interest should be made very clear to all participants. However, they cannot be involved as 'ordinary citizens', and the recruitment strategy should spot these individuals and not consider them.
What distinguishes experts is not that they have knowledge, as also citizens and stakeholder have knowledge. Their specificity is that experts are those who possess scientific or technical knowledge, acquired through a research process, or because they have professional experience with the issue of concern. This can include the study of pollinator species and their life, the causes of their decline, the best ways to protect them, collecting data on their numbers and effectiveness or impact of certain practices. But it might also include knowledge in law, society, philosophy, ethics, etc. In general, experts are expected to provide a balanced perspective on the issue, unaffiliated with a specific interest, even if in practice they often have sympathy for specific cause or perspective. Similarly to stakeholders, they cannot be involved as 'ordinary citizens', and the recruitment strategy should spot these individuals and not consider them.
These are the representatives of public institutions, whether at the local, regional, national or even supra-national level. They are the officials, administrators or policy assistants, either elected or not, but who are members of institutions that hold democratically granted decision-making powers. They might be the commissioners of participatory processes or/and they might be the ones who receive the final results of the process, e.g., in the form of recommendations. Whatever the case, due to their direct contact with decision-making processes, their role might be crucial in securing long-term and meaningful impacts. They can also come to the process as experts holding specific knowledge about the local legal frameworks and rules that enable or limit what can be done. But they cannot be involved as 'ordinary citizens', and the recruitment strategy should spot these individuals and not consider them.
And what of animals themselves? Making decisions about pollinators, like most other environmental topics, brings us to the edges of established ethical and political ideas, as it forces us to ask: Whose voice counts? Whose lives should we be concerned with? As many philosophers, activists, artists and event politicians claim, trying to find out ways to solve environmental problems concerns not just humans but also other living beings: thousands of other species and billions upon billions of individual living creatures. It is no longer a niche topic to speak about animal rights, welfare or legal status of ecosystems. In the political domain, a new concept has been proposed - that of 'denizens', wild animals living in proximity to humans and as such being members of a wider inter-species community with specific rights. We flag this not to promote one of these proposals. Rather, this is a timely debate in which participatory processes can play an important role.
Here we want to focus especially on citizens as participants, and especially on their recruitment. The choice of participant recruitment strategy will depend on the type of process you want to implement, the results intended and the resources at your disposal. Below you can read about key approaches with their specific rationales.
Random sampling
Technically termed 'sortition' or a 'democratic lottery', this approach is about selecting a random sample of a given population (which might refer to all the residents of a neighbourhood, city, region, country... depending on the level at which you work), which will be broadly demographically representative of that population. You will have to select the criteria of representativity, which most commonly include gender, age, education, income, geographic spread, but might also include attitudinal factors (e.g., 'Do you care about pollinators decline?') or knowledge factors (e.g., 'How much do you know about pollinators?') - this is called the 'screener'.
In practice, this process usually includes two stages. First, invitations to express interest to participate in a process are sent to a very broad group of citizens, randomly selected from a public register. Then, out of the ones who respond positively, a representative group is selected and invited to attend.
This is the costliest and most resource-intensive approach. At the same time, it is also commonly seen as providing the processes with greatest legitimacy, which is important especially in situations where the results of a participatory process might have impacts on a wider community (e.g., developing recommendations for a city-wide pollinators strategy). This is because in this approach every member of a given community has in principle an equal chance to be selected, and the method seeks to ensure representation of the diversity of the community.
If you go for this approach, you will most likely have to pay or collaborate with an organisation or institution that specialises in this type of work.
Targeted recruitment
If there is a specific group of people you want to reach, you might want to use ‘targeted’ or ‘purposive’ sampling. Here you would directly try to invite members of a specific community because, for instance, they have the knowledge and experience needed to address the issue, they are particularly affected by it, or they have not been involved thus far. In practice, this might mean first finding a local reference person – someone who knows well the community and is trusted by its members – to facilitate access to its members.
Be prepared to dedicate some time for preparatory meetings to explain your project, develop trust and convince your potential participants it's worth taking part. It might also be a good idea to work out some parts of the project design with the targeted group, to give participants agency over what they do and how.
This strategy might be used in combination with other recruitment approaches to ensure the presence of the particularly hard-to-reach communities.
Opportunistic recruitment
This approach consists of making an open call addressed to anyone interested in joining the process within a specific community, group, etc. For example, if your participants are young people, you might want to target universities, schools, clubs, etc. Such call can be made through different channels, including traditional or social media, posters, municipality newsletters, mailing groups. The choice might depend on who you want to get in the room or what resources are at your disposal.
While this might have the lowest entry threshold, it is also the least reliable approach and most likely to get in the room the 'usual suspects' - those with time on their hands, sufficient resources and already most active in the given domain. For this reason, it is usually used for piloting processes or needs to be complemented with additional strategies.
While easy to implement, it might also be difficult to break through the avalanche of events and invitations that citizens are regularly bombarded with. Consequently, you might end-up putting a lot of effort into advertising your process or will have to depend on support of a well-known initiative that people already trust and follow.
General considerations for recruitment
Your success in recruiting participants will depend not just on the quality of your recruitment strategy and resources you put into it but also the features of the process' design and logistics.
- Token to participants. This should not be thought of as a reward for participation and should not constitute the only motivation for participants to join in - but it should clearly show that citizens' participation is valued and they get something in return for their time and effort to attend. In focus groups and deliberative processes this is mandatory.
- You should reimburse any costs citizens incur to be able to participate in the process. Most commonly this will be travel but might also include, e.g., childcare.
- Reimbursement of costs is not in itself sufficient to make the event accessible. If one needs to travel to the location, consider that some might not have a car - does public transport provide equally good access options? Can you organise carpooling? There are many other things that may make it difficult for people to join - for instance work schedules, taking care for children, studies, disability – that you should take into consideration.
- Whatever the strategy you use, make sure that (potential) participants are well informed about what they are signing up for. This includes distributing informational materials (typically an info-kit should be developed) or even individual conversations to clear any doubts.
When including different age groups, consider their specific needs and capacities. For instance, for the participation of children, you can find out more by reading about the >Irish Children and Young People’s Assembly on Biodiversity Loss, and use >resources developed by CC-DEMOS.