Incorporating Participant Perspectives to Refine Citizen Science Evaluation Frameworks

Abstract

Describing the types of outcomes and impacts achieved in Citizen Science (CS) initiatives aids the evaluation and comparison of participatory research practices in this rapidly growing and maturing field. However, this is often done from the perspective of the lead researcher or the organisers of the initiative. There is increasing attention in the literature to the broad range of benefits experienced by participants in CS initiatives, such as domain-related learning and social contact, but not often examined from the participants’ perspective. In the ‘Delft Meet Regen’ (Delft Measures Rain, DMR) project, where local residents collaborated in environmental monitoring tasks, the organisers were interested in discovering what outcomes were most relevant to the participants, and what impacts they experienced or perceived from participating in the project. In this paper we describe the application and alignment of two frameworks developed for measuring individual learning outcomes (ILOs) and impacts to our own investigation of what outcomes were experienced by the participants, according to the participants themselves. We found that although the ILO framework was comprehensive, it still lacked the ability to capture the complexity and detail of the participant's experience in relation to their environment. These relational outcomes reported by DMR participants that did not find a place in the frameworks are likely to have an influence on other outcomes and impacts of CS initiatives. We therefore close with a proposal for updates to the ILO framework to take these participant-centric outcomes more fully into account.