| Summary: | <p class="first" id="d370037e115">
Science communication research and practice currently promote strategies oriented
towards creating audience engagement around scientific content. Consequently, science
communication needs to continually explore new methodologies that enable audiences’
participation in order to meet their interests and needs. The present study combines
qualitative and participatory action research (PAR) methods guided by decolonial epistemologies
to develop a co-designed project with public health, nutrition and sports science
researchers to recruit young audiences from Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, and from
Cuenca, Ecuador. The main goal of this study was to create strategies to motivate
young audiences’ engagement and interest in adopting healthy habits. This article
focuses on the study’s research design in order to provide guidelines and procedural
recommendations for facilitating a co-design approach for developing science communication
initiatives targeting children and teenagers in Ecuador and the United States. As
we demonstrate, the PAR approach for co-design leads to useful outcomes: (1) the incorporation
of decolonial theory guidelines in participatory research; and (2) the development of science communication strategies that combine online and offline activities
to put in dialogue scientists and their audiences, ultimately resulting in mutual
learning, thus allowing scholars and practitioners to explore in practical terms how
to co-design improved strategies.
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