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Citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the Local Environment Action on Food project in Alberta, Canada
BACKGROUND: Citizen science bears potential to build a comprehensive view of global food environments and create a broader discussion about how to improve them. Despite its potential, citizen science has not been fully utilised in food environment research. Thus, we sought to explore stakeholders’ e...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8985336/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35387614 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13030-1 |
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author | Aylward, Breanne L. Milford, Krista M. Storey, Kate E. Nykiforuk, Candace I. J. Raine, Kim D. |
author_facet | Aylward, Breanne L. Milford, Krista M. Storey, Kate E. Nykiforuk, Candace I. J. Raine, Kim D. |
author_sort | Aylward, Breanne L. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Citizen science bears potential to build a comprehensive view of global food environments and create a broader discussion about how to improve them. Despite its potential, citizen science has not been fully utilised in food environment research. Thus, we sought to explore stakeholders’ experiences of the Local Environment Action on Food (LEAF) project, a community-based intervention that employs a citizen science approach to monitoring food environments. METHODS: We used a qualitative collective case study design to explore citizen science through the LEAF process in seven communities in Alberta, Canada. Data generating strategies included semi-structured interviews with citizen scientists (n = 26), document review of communities’ Mini Nutrition Report Cards (n = 7), and researcher observation. Data were analyzed in a multi-phase process, using Charmaz’s constant comparison analysis strategy. RESULTS: Analysis revealed two main themes: relationship building and process factors. Communities used three interconnected strategies, engaging the right people, treading lightly, and reaching a consensus, to navigate the vital but challenging relationship building process. Process factors, which were influences on the LEAF process and relationship building, included the local context, flexibility in the LEAF process, and turnover among LEAF community groups. CONCLUSION: Citizen science through the LEAF project supported the creation and application of food environment evidence: it enabled residents to collect and interpret local food environment data, develop realistic recommendations for change, and provided them with an evidence-based advocacy tool to support the implementation of these recommendations. We recommend a web application that enables independent community food environment assessments. Such a tool could stimulate and sustain citizen involvement in food environment efforts, helping to build the necessary evidence base and promote the creation of healthy food environments. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8985336 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-89853362022-04-07 Citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the Local Environment Action on Food project in Alberta, Canada Aylward, Breanne L. Milford, Krista M. Storey, Kate E. Nykiforuk, Candace I. J. Raine, Kim D. BMC Public Health Research BACKGROUND: Citizen science bears potential to build a comprehensive view of global food environments and create a broader discussion about how to improve them. Despite its potential, citizen science has not been fully utilised in food environment research. Thus, we sought to explore stakeholders’ experiences of the Local Environment Action on Food (LEAF) project, a community-based intervention that employs a citizen science approach to monitoring food environments. METHODS: We used a qualitative collective case study design to explore citizen science through the LEAF process in seven communities in Alberta, Canada. Data generating strategies included semi-structured interviews with citizen scientists (n = 26), document review of communities’ Mini Nutrition Report Cards (n = 7), and researcher observation. Data were analyzed in a multi-phase process, using Charmaz’s constant comparison analysis strategy. RESULTS: Analysis revealed two main themes: relationship building and process factors. Communities used three interconnected strategies, engaging the right people, treading lightly, and reaching a consensus, to navigate the vital but challenging relationship building process. Process factors, which were influences on the LEAF process and relationship building, included the local context, flexibility in the LEAF process, and turnover among LEAF community groups. CONCLUSION: Citizen science through the LEAF project supported the creation and application of food environment evidence: it enabled residents to collect and interpret local food environment data, develop realistic recommendations for change, and provided them with an evidence-based advocacy tool to support the implementation of these recommendations. We recommend a web application that enables independent community food environment assessments. Such a tool could stimulate and sustain citizen involvement in food environment efforts, helping to build the necessary evidence base and promote the creation of healthy food environments. BioMed Central 2022-04-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8985336/ /pubmed/35387614 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13030-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Aylward, Breanne L. Milford, Krista M. Storey, Kate E. Nykiforuk, Candace I. J. Raine, Kim D. Citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the Local Environment Action on Food project in Alberta, Canada |
title | Citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the Local Environment Action on Food project in Alberta, Canada |
title_full | Citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the Local Environment Action on Food project in Alberta, Canada |
title_fullStr | Citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the Local Environment Action on Food project in Alberta, Canada |
title_full_unstemmed | Citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the Local Environment Action on Food project in Alberta, Canada |
title_short | Citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the Local Environment Action on Food project in Alberta, Canada |
title_sort | citizen science in monitoring food environments: a qualitative collective case study of stakeholders’ experiences during the local environment action on food project in alberta, canada |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8985336/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35387614 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-13030-1 |
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