# Citizen Voice Ethical Guidelines

## Introduction

### Purpose of the Report
The development of ethical guidelines for citizen engagement surveys is essential to ensure integrity, respect, and fairness in participatory urban planning processes. Surveys serve as key instruments for gathering the voices of diverse communities, and ethical considerations must guide their design and implementation. These guidelines are especially relevant when working with digital tools, which present both opportunities and challenges in maintaining trust, equity, and privacy.

### Context: Growing Importance of Participatory Urban Planning
Participatory urban planning is becoming increasingly central to the design of inclusive and sustainable cities. It empowers citizens to meaningfully influence decisions about their environments. However, the quality of participation depends on ethical, transparent, and thoughtful engagement practices. While digital technologies have broadened the reach and flexibility of participatory tools, they have also introduced new ethical challenges related to accessibility, data ownership, and equitable inclusion.

The ethical principles outlined in this document have been developed through the ongoing work of the Citizen Voice initiative, which has identified key factors necessary for maintaining ethical integrity in participatory processes.

### Ethical Principles for Citizen Engagement Surveys

<span style="color: blue;">These are normative values that should guide all aspects of the survey process, whether you're designing, deploying, or analyzing.</span>

<span style="color: blue;"><em>“What core ethical values should we uphold when engaging citizens?”</em></span>

Ethical principles are the foundation of responsible citizen engagement, especially in contexts involving data collection, digital tools, and participatory decision-making. These guidelines are important because they help safeguard the dignity, rights, and voices of individuals who contribute to planning processes. They ensure that participation is not only effective but also fair and respectful.

These principles are intended for researchers, practitioners, city officials, designers, and anyone involved in conducting or facilitating engagement surveys. Whether you are designing, deploying, or analyzing a survey, these high-level, normative values serve as a compass to guide ethical choices and uphold public trust in participatory processes.

**Transparency**
- Clearly explain **why** you are involving people and **what decisions** will be made.
- Show **how the process works**, step by step, in a way everyone can understand.
- Don’t just involve people as a formality. **Show them how their opinions actually influence decisions.**

**Informed Consent and Privacy**
- Tell participants **what data you collect**, **why you collect it**, and **what will happen with it**.
- Let people join **anonymously if possible**.
- Allow them to **leave at any time without negative consequences**.
- Be clear about **who owns the data and if it will be shared or published**.

**Inclusivity and Accessibility**
- Use **simple, inclusive language** and different formats like audio, video, or pictures.
- Provide **translations, accessible designs, and technical support** for everyone.
- Think about **digital skills and physical or mental disabilities** when designing your tools and activities.
- Reduce barriers by offering things like **childcare, transport help, flexible meeting times, or trusted community contacts**.

**Trust and Reciprocity**
- Work with **local community leaders or organisations** who can connect you with people.
- Always **communicate back** to participants what decisions were made and **how their input helped**, in clear language.
- Engage in **continuous cycles**: inform people, gather their input, reflect on it, adapt your plans, and keep them updated.

**Open Knowledge Sharing**
- Share your **methods**, **tools**, **and findings** so others can learn and build on your work.
- This avoids repeating the same work and encourages **new ideas and solutions**.
- Use **open-source platforms** whenever you can, to keep the process transparent and collaborative.

**Ethical Oversight** 
- Researchers must follow **their university’s ethics guidelines**.
- Collaborators from other organisations should check with **their own ethics committees**.
- Treat ethics as an **ongoing and reflective process**, not just a form to fill out.

## Guidelines for Survey Creators

<span style="color: blue;">These are concrete, practical instructions tailored to the different stages of building and conducting a survey. They answer the question:</span>

<span style="color: blue;"><em>“What should I do, step by step, to ensure the survey is ethically sound?”</em></span>

### Before Designing the Survey
- **Co-Define Goals:** Collaborate with community partners to define the survey’s purpose, scope, and expectations. Ensure alignment on whether the aim of participation is democratic engagement or problem-solving. Engage in clear communication, trust, and transparency from the outset to build mutual understanding and accountability.
- **Design for Equity:** Apply universal design principles that accommodate diverse levels of education, language proficiency, and access to technology. Participation should be relevant to the everyday lives of citizens and tailored to the specific context and needs of the groups involved. Consider both formal and informal communication styles to reduce risks of exclusion or stigmatization.
- **Anticipate Risks:** Identify and address power imbalances that may affect participation. Recognize the potential harms, including the risks of stigmatization, and plan to mitigate them through inclusive processes and moderation/facilitation strategies that ensure all voices are heard.
- **Plan for Compensation:** Acknowledge and fairly compensate the time, knowledge, and lived experiences of participants, especially those from marginalized communities. Be transparent about the basis of compensation, recognizing the tension between extrinsic and intrinsic motivations.
- **Establish Feedback Mechanisms:** Design the survey with built-in feedback loops to communicate outcomes clearly and maintain engagement over time. Emphasize responsiveness and continuity as ongoing commitments. Where possible, develop new partnerships and support local networks to sustain dialogue beyond the survey period.

### During Survey Deployment
- **Support Participation:** Provide both human and technological assistance to ensure accessibility for all participants. Consider the use of moderators or facilitators to guide participation, reduce misunderstandings, and foster a welcoming environment, especially in settings with varying levels of familiarity with digital tools.
- **Ensure Anonymity Options:** Offer the ability for respondents to remain anonymous and clarify how their data will be handled. Address expectation management by setting clear boundaries for privacy, influence, and use of information.
- **Communicate Clearly:** Explain the survey’s purpose, estimated time commitment, and voluntary nature in plain, inclusive language. Aim for clear communication, transparency, and trust-building to foster confidence in the process. Consider the tone, formal or informal, depending on the context, to avoid alienating any groups.
- **Respond to Concerns:** Provide timely responses to participant questions or issues during the survey. Actively monitor participation levels and flag possible challenges such as technical access barriers or feelings of exclusion. Recognize that being included is not the same as feeling genuinely engaged or influential in the process.
- **Promote Inclusiveness:** Use a mix of digital and physical participation modes where possible. Ensure the process accommodates different levels of tech access and comfort, recognizing contextual needs and use cases. Leverage top-down and bottom-up approaches to avoid power imbalances.

### After the Survey
- **Close the Feedback Loop:** Publish results in accessible, plain-language formats that reach the participants and wider public. Share not only what was said but how it influenced decisions, maintaining continuity and responsiveness. Reaffirm transparency by making clear how feedback shaped actions.
- **Document Impact:** Clearly state how the findings shaped outcomes. Link this process back to the multi-dimensional assessment of effectiveness, capturing both outcomes and how inclusive or engaging the process was. This ensures public participation is seen as meaningful, not symbolic.
- **Store Data Responsibly:** Ensure data is securely stored and anonymized before any form of sharing or analysis. Respect privacy and institutional commitments to ethical stewardship of community knowledge.
- **Reflect and Learn:** Conduct internal reviews to assess what worked and what didn’t. Evaluate both the process and the outcomes, and update your practices accordingly. Build and share a knowledge base that supports a more equitable playing field in future participatory work.

#### Practical guidelines:
- You are a guest; always be respectful.
- Introduce yourself as a student (students are generally seen as approachable).
- Manage expectations: explain clearly the purpose of your street interviews.
- Think carefully about your words to avoid stigmatizing anyone.
- If people don’t want to participate, don’t take it personally. Stay polite and thank them for their time.

## Guidelines for Survey Respondents

<span style="color: blue;">hese are recommendations designed to help individuals understand their rights and responsibilities when participating in a survey. They answer the question:</span>

<span style="color: blue;"><em>“What should I know and do to participate ethically, safely, and meaningfully in a citizen engagement survey?”</em></span>

### Before Participating
- **Understand the Survey Purpose:** Know what the survey aims to achieve, what topics it will cover, and how your responses will be used. A good process will share clear and transparent communication upfront. Look for information about who is conducting the survey and what decisions it may inform.
- **Clarify Your Rights:** You have the right to participate voluntarily, decline to answer any question, and exit the survey at any time. Ensure you understand how your anonymity and confidentiality will be protected.
- **Assess Relevance to Your Life:** Surveys should aim to connect to the everyday experiences of citizens. If something feels disconnected or unclear, you are encouraged to seek clarification before beginning.
### During Participation
- **Engage Authentically:** Provide honest, thoughtful responses. Feeling included is not just about being asked, it’s about knowing your voice matters. Your lived experience can shape better decisions.
- **Ask for Help If Needed:** If a question is confusing, too technical, or not accessible to you (e.g. due to language or format), ask for clarification or assistance. Effective surveys often have moderators or facilitators who can help.
- **Know You Have Influence:** Participation should not feel symbolic. Ethical surveys aim to ensure inclusiveness and create opportunities for you to influence the process, not just complete a form.
### After Participation
- **Stay Informed:** You can ask how your input contributed to the final results. Feedback loops, where findings are shared with participants, are a sign of respect and accountability in public participation.
- **Give Feedback:** Your experience matters. Sharing what worked and what didn’t helps make future surveys more inclusive, accessible, and engaging. Some organizations also review the process to learn and improve.
- **Look for Outcomes:** Watch for how the results of the survey are shared or used. Surveys committed to transparency, responsiveness, and continuity will show how your voice contributed to change.

### Final Recommendations
- **Embed Ethics Early and Often:** Ethical engagement must begin at the design stage and evolve continuously.
- **Value Citizen Contributions:** Compensate time and insights, and show respect for all participants.
- **Build Ethical Infrastructure:** Develop flexible ethics protocols that accommodate digital and experimental approaches.
- **Train Practitioners:** Invest in education and training around participatory methods, especially digital and inclusive tools.
- **Recognize Diverse Stakeholders:** Include voices often left out of traditional processes—especially "silent stakeholders" like nature or future generations.
- **Design Beyond Compliance:** View ethical engagement not as a box-checking task but as a deeply relational, long-term process.