Assessing the Impacts of Public Participation: Concepts, Evidence and Policy Implications

The expansion of ordinary citizens’ roles in a variety of policy and decision-making processes has created a pressing need to draw out the lessons from accumulated work in the field of public engagement to inform the design and evaluation of new public engagement processes. In particular, the effects of these roles on decision processes and outcomes, and on the citizens themselves, warrant scrutiny. These questions are increasingly relevant to health policy makers and health system managers working in local, provincial and national or pan-Canadian settings to find meaningful and effective ways to involve citizens in their decision-making processes. In this paper, we explore what is known about the extent to which the goals of public participation in policy have been met. The current state of knowledge about the impact of public participation on policy and civic literacy is reviewed along with the conceptual and methodological approaches to evaluation and their associated challenges. The published (English and French) empirical public participation evaluation literature is also reviewed and reflections from key informant interviews with policy makers and public participation practitioners are shared. The limits to evaluation and its uptake are discussed and strategies for advancing the practice and methods of public participation evaluation are outlined.