participantsto

Participantsto is a term encountered in participatory design, research documentation, and data modeling to denote the relation between a process, event, or artifact and the people who participate in it. The word is not a widely standardized term; it typically appears as a field name or edge label in data schemas, particularly in graph representations, where it encodes the set of participants associated with a given node such as a study, workshop, or decision-making session.

Semantics and usage: The intended meaning derives from its components: participants and to. In practice, participantsto may be implemented as a one-to-many relationship from a process node to person nodes, or as a list of participant identifiers attached to an item. In natural language contexts, the phrase "participants to" is more common; in technical contexts, the concatenated form "participantsto" is used for identifiers and API fields.

Examples: In a participatory budgeting platform, the participantsto relation connects each project to the participants who contributed input, votes, or discussions. In an ethnographic study database, participantsto records map interview sessions to the participants involved.

Relation to other terms: It overlaps with concepts such as participants, contributors, stakeholders, and attendees, but specifically denotes the linking relationship from a process to its participants rather than the participants themselves.

See also/notes: There is no single canonical definition; readers should consult the specific data model or documentation in use when they encounter participantsto.