Novel participatory methods for co-building an agent-based model of physical activity with youth

Leah Frerichs, Natalie Smith, Jill A Kuhlberg, Gretchen Mason, Damie Jackson-Diop, Doris Stith, Giselle Corbie-Smith and Kristen Hassmiller Lich

PLOS ONE, 2020, vol. 15, issue 11, 1-14

Abstract: Public health scholarship has increasingly called for the use of system science approaches to understand complex problems, including the use of participatory engagement to inform the modeling process. Some system science traditions, specifically system dynamics modeling, have an established participatory practice tradition. Yet, there remains limited guidance on engagement strategies using other modeling approaches like agent-based models. Our objective is to describe how we engaged adolescent youth in co-building an agent-based model about physical activity. Specifically, we aim to describe how we communicated technical aspects of agent-based models, the participatory activities we developed, and the resulting visual diagrams that were produced. We implemented six sessions with nine adolescent participants. To make technical aspects more accessible, we used an analogy that linked core components of agent-based models to elements of storytelling. We also implemented novel, facilitated activities that engaged youth in the development, annotation, and review of graphs over time, geographical maps, and state charts. The process was well-received by the participants and helped inform the basic structure of an agent-based model. The resulting visual diagrams created space for deeper discussion among participants about patterns of daily activity, important places for physical activity, and interactions between social and built environments. This work lays a foundation to develop and refine engagement strategies, especially for translating qualitative insights into quantitative model specifications such as ‘decision rules’.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0241108 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 41108&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0241108

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0241108

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().