Evaluating Impact on Co-Researchers: Instruments for Participatory Projects and Insights from Practice with Citizens, Artists, and Artificial Intelligence Experts

All participatory projects seek to create change, yet their intended impact is rarely planned and evaluated systematically. In this article, we reflect on the instruments we used to plan and evaluate the impact of How to Explain AI, a twelve-month participatory process that developed an art-based science communication intervention to foster artificial intelligence (AI) literacy among non-experts. We focus specifically on its effects on the 20 participating co-researchers from diverse backgrounds (citizen scientists, artists, AI experts). We combined a Theory of Change approach with the map and instruments of the Open Innovation in Science (OIS) Impact Model to guide initial conceptualization, continuous reflection, and systematic impact evaluation. Central goals were to create a shared vision, to activate co-researchers as multipliers, and foster engagement with and critical reflection on the research topic beyond the project activities. Ongoing contact in a series of workshops allowed us to support and evaluate impact directly. Drawing on the instruments applied, we examine how continuous, formative evaluation supported impact planning, assessment, and project management in a process-oriented, open-ended participatory project. Our findings indicate that impact can be planned and evaluated even when outcomes are not predetermined at the outset. Ongoing formative evaluation guided iterative adaptations and also contributed to impact itself, for example, by strengthening the shared vision it was designed to assess. The project further increased co-researchers’ confidence and agency and motivated independent engagement with AI. We derive practical guidance for evaluating impact on co-researchers in art-based, co-creative, and other intensely collaborative participatory projects.