Research That Starts with Everyday Experience: Lessons from TOPFIT Citizenlab

The University of Twente’s experience in TOPFIT Citizenlab shows how community knowledge can help shape research questions, working methods and learning.

Living with a health condition involves knowledge that is difficult to capture in a single measurement. Daily routines, practical obstacles and personal priorities all influence which research questions are worth asking.

TOPFIT Citizenlab brought these experiences into collaborative research in the Twente region. The initiative involved the University of Twente, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, ROC van Twente and partners from healthcare, society, business and government.

Its work included questions about fatigue among people with rheumatoid arthritis, living with type 2 diabetes and healthy ageing. Citizens and patients helped shape the research, contributing knowledge about what mattered in their daily lives. UT’s account of the programme also highlights the importance of flexibility: working with participants means allowing their contributions to influence how a study develops. Read UT’s TOPFIT Citizenlab case study.

The programme’s field guide provides a concrete example from research involving people with type 2 diabetes. Participants wanted different roles: some were interested in testing technology or sharing experiences, while others wanted to help prepare interviews or analyse data. Discussing these preferences helped the team organise the collaboration around people’s interests and desired contributions. Explore the Citizen Science for Health field guide.

For EPiCS, these experiences offer practical lessons for Research Service-Learning. A student working with a community needs opportunities to understand how people define a problem, negotiate a useful contribution and reflect on what the collaboration teaches them. Community members need an equally clear opportunity to influence the work.

This suggests making time at the beginning of a project to agree on expectations, responsibilities and ways of sharing findings. Participation can then accommodate different interests, abilities and levels of availability.

TOPFIT Citizenlab provides a valuable example for EPiCS as it develops collaborative research and learning activities. Starting with people’s experiences can help universities ask more relevant questions, and create learning opportunities that matter to everyone involved.