Using Games to Increase the Reach of Diverse Citizens

A virtual brainstorming event named "The Impact of Diversity on Research Quality: Exploring the Knowledge Gap" was organized by the Berlin Institute of Health, Einstein Foundation and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation from 30 October - 1 November 2023.

In addition to project dissemination and sharing with researchers our project aims, objectives and progress, we discussed and presented how the use of games can be used to increase the reach of diverse citizens to improve research quality, in a short presentation.

Two types of games will be deployed in the project - short quiz ones and long collaborative ones. The games will be co-designed with participants and different stakeholders concerned with the climate emergency from various perspectives. Once the games have been co-designed, they will be ready and the short quiz games will be advertised in different popular mobile games, with the aim of reaching different groups. There is reliable market research showing the tendencies of different popular mobile games being played by different groups of people e.g. in one geographical region, by a certain group of people in a particular social class, level of education and so on.

We leverage this information so that we can include underrepresented groups in our research data collection, by carefully selecting popular mobile games to recruit participants to play our short quiz games. The games will be used to collect citizens’ preferences and attitudes towards the climate emergency.

Additionally, gender dimensions will be considered in analysis of impact, to assess whether co-design of engagement activities reproduces gender stereotypes or whether, in an appropriate setting, co-design contributes to supporting gender diversity.

Regarding diversity and inclusion in the target audience, we will:

• Agree and set quotas to ensure we recruit as representative a base as possible in terms of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, disability, etc.
• Recommend recruiting a cohort of users with visual and potentially cognitive impairments.
• Provide a neutral platform, which means that we can work with different platforms that best meet respondents’ accessibility needs.
• Continuing from this brainstorming event, a panel discussion organized by the Einstein Foundation Berlin will be held during the Berlin Science week on 3 Nov 2023 (in-person and online). A paper highlighting insights gained from the event to share lessons learned with the global scientific community will be published, with contributions from all speakers, panelists and participants.