Scaled, citizen-led, and public qualitative research: a framework for citizen social science

Amirah Amirrudin, Nicholas Harrigan, Ijlal Naqvi*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    6 Citations (Scopus)
    38 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    We propose a framework for citizen social science that brings together three reinforcing elements of a research project - scale, citizen-leadership, and publicness - to improve qualitative research. Our framework was born out of necessity; a desire to involve ordinary citizens, in researching public issues, with limited funding. We illustrate the application of our framework using insights from research we have led, involving first, a series of qualitative studies of state and civil society organizations working on community engagement by three separate years of public policy students; and second, a qualitative study on the system for processing salary and injury disputes for low-waged migrant workers in Singapore conducted by over 100 volunteers and activists. Drawing on a review of the literature and our own experiences, we speak to the advantages and trade-offs of adopting this approach and suggest practical methods for conducting citizen social science.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)1019-1039
    Number of pages21
    JournalCurrent Sociology
    Volume71
    Issue number6
    Early online date15 Nov 2021
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Oct 2023

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright the Author(s) 2021. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

    Keywords

    • citizen social science
    • participatory research
    • problem-solving sociology
    • public sociology
    • qualitative methods

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