Evaluating transdisciplinary methods: a new scale for measuring knowledge integration

Transdisciplinary research presents a promising approach to addressing complex societal challenges by integrating scientific and experiential knowledge in joint learning processes. Transdisciplinary methods are crucial for supporting knowledge integration by enabling actors from within and outside academia to evaluate their expertise, share insights, and co-create innovative solutions. Despite growing interest in transdisciplinary methods, their effectiveness remains under-researched, mainly due to a lack of standardized instruments to measure their contribution to knowledge integration. This gap is particularly significant given that the usefulness of transdisciplinary methods depends on knowledge integration as a multidimensional, iterative process that fosters learning without predetermined outcomes. In this study, a novel scale was developed and tested empirically to assess the contribution of transdisciplinary methods to knowledge integration. The scale development process involved a systematic review of 48 literature sources, which synthesized over 300 statements into 34 items. These items were tested in workshops with 71 participants using two different transdisciplinary methods: transdisciplinary scenario building and serious game development. The participants represented expertise from three academic disciplines and experiential knowledge from the dairy and meat supply chains as well as game development. Exploratory factor analysis revealed two distinct dimensions of knowledge integration: a socio-emotional factor and a cognitive-communicative factor. This finding resulted in a refined 25-item scale. The scale was then employed to compare the two transdisciplinary methods, thereby providing an instrument for comparative analysis of their respective contributions to knowledge integration. The article also underscores the scale’s limitations and offers recommendations for future scale refinement. By improving the methodological basis for measuring transdisciplinary methods, this research contributes to the ongoing improvement of transdisciplinary research.