Diabetes is a serious public health problem in the border region between the United States of America and Mexico, reflecting and by some measures surpassing the extent of national diabetes burden of each country. The U.S.-Mexico Border Diabetes Prevention and Control Project, a two-phase prevalence study on type 2 diabetes and its risk factors, was conceived and developed by culturally diverse ...

Models for community-based participatory research (CBPR) urge academic investigators to collaborate with communities to identify and pursue research questions, processes, and outcomes valuable to both partners. The tribal participatory research (TPR) conceptual model suggests modifications to CBPR to fit the special needs of American Indian communities. This paper draws upon authors' collaborat...

Does a participatory, open-ended organizational format inspire creativity and draw on participants' local knowledge? Many nonprofits operate under this assumption, and many of their financial sponsors agree, and therefore demand precise accounts documenting the nonprofits' "participatory" formats. In the U.S. youth civic engagement projects described here, the practice of accounting itself had ...

It is becoming widely accepted that applied social simulation research is more effective if potential users and stakeholders are closely involved in model specification, design, testing and use, using the principles of participatory research. In this paper, a review of software engineering principles and accounts of the development of simulation models are used as the basis for recommendations ...

Engaging young people in participatory design can be challenging, particularly in health-related projects. In a study co-designing diabetes support and information services with teenagers, we found framing activities using popular culture was a useful strategy. Various cultural references helped us stage activities that were productive for the design process, and were engaging for our young par...

In participatory budgeting, communities collectively decide on the allocation of public tax dollars for local public projects. In this work, we consider the question of fairly aggregating the preferences of community members to determine an allocation of funds to projects. This problem is different from standard fair resource allocation because of public goods: The allocated goods benefit all u...

Participatory design approaches are being increasingly employed for designing digital artefacts and information systems with and for local communities. These cases require a reconceptualization of PD processes to account for widened knowledge gaps between designers and community members, and new patterns of community-defined design goals. In this paper we provide a perspective on the design pro...

AIM This paper seeks to add to the debate regarding children as researchers by exploring the reality of their participation in research. BACKGROUND As the role children and young people play in knowledge building is recognised, their position as social agents is evolving. This has led to a shift in the ways in which children and young people participate in research, and in particular in their...

This special session features scientists and developers building innovative interactive virtual environments that can be used for science education from kindergarten through college. The four projects presented in this session focus on different areas of science, from space physics to entomology, but they share a common educational orientation towards participatory learning using Internet acces...

This study explores the implementation of IS/IT projects in service-centric organisation. The study was carried out to conform to the principles of participatory action research. To undertake the study, a case study is employed. Data is collected from historical