Participants in Citizen Science

Land-Zandstra, Anne; Agnello, Gaia; Gültekin, Yaşar Selman

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-58278-4_13

Cited by 71 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Gains in knowledge and skills are among the participant outcomes most often sought by CS projects [30,32]. Knowledge and skills were defined by Phillips et al [30] as follows (p. 7 and 9):…”

Section: Project Participants' Gains In Knowledge and Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various authors have emphasized the necessity for research into such characteristics or design features of CS projects [17,30,39,[43][44][45]. Existing literature on CS project characteristics largely focuses on how these characteristics are associated with general project success [32,[46][47][48][49][50][51], which is often synonymous with participant motivation and retention. In addition, several authors have discussed CS project characteristics that could potentially affect participants' learning in general.…”

Section: Citizen Science Project Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Citizen science project characteristics: Connection to participants’ gains in knowledge and skills

et al. 2021

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Background Biodiversity is being lost rapidly and its conservation is thus one of the most urgent tasks today. For biodiversity conservation to be successful, the public needs to gain an awareness and understanding of biodiversity and its importance. Moreover, species experts are needed who have the skills necessary for identifying and recording biodiversity. Previous research showed that citizen science projects can contribute to educating the public about biodiversity. However, it is still unclear how project characteristics connect to participants’ knowledge and skills and how citizen science projects should be designed if they are to foster participants’ learning. Aim We aimed to investigate specific characteristics of biodiversity citizen science projects that could potentially influence participants’ learning. We explored the following project characteristics from both the project coordinators’ and the participants’ perspectives: information and training provided to participants, social interaction among participants, contact between participants and staff, and feedback and recognition provided to participants. Methods and results In order to examine the extent to which these project characteristics are connected to participants’ gains in knowledge and skills, we conducted a comprehensive study across 48 biodiversity citizen science projects in Europe and Australia. We found that participants’ perceived gains in knowledge and skills were significantly related to the five project characteristics as reported by the participants: information received by the participants, training received by the participants, social interaction among participants, contact between participants and staff, and feedback and recognition received by the participants. Conclusion We conclude that by deliberately designing citizen science projects to include features such as interaction and feedback, these projects could achieve higher learning outcomes for the participants. Thereby, suitable modes of communication between projects and their participants are crucial. We provide specific suggestions for the design of biodiversity citizen science projects and for future research on project characteristics and participant outcomes.

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Section: Project Participants' Gains In Knowledge and Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Citizen Science Project Characteristicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Citizen science project characteristics: Connection to participants’ gains in knowledge and skills

et al. 2021

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“…Citizen scientists should have been supported with more specific instructions for the recordings, i.e., how (smartphone orientation), where (regions), and when (during the night). Such a task-lead approach facilitates data collection for citizen scientists (Moczek et al 2021 ) and enables them to get a common understanding of data quality (Land-Zandstra et al 2021 ). Positive feedback and confirmation of the number of successfully recorded nightingale songs likewise might have helped to increase quality (Peltola and Arpin 2018 ) and motivate citizen scientists to participate long-term (Pandya and Dibner 2018 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Community engagement and data quality: best practices and lessons learned from a citizen science project on birdsong

et al. 2022

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Citizen Science (CS) is a research approach that has become popular in recent years and offers innovative potential for dialect research in ornithology. As the scepticism about CS data is still widespread, we analysed the development of a 3-year CS project based on the song of the Common Nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) to share best practices and lessons learned. We focused on the data scope, individual engagement, spatial distribution and species misidentifications from recordings generated before (2018, 2019) and during the COVID-19 outbreak (2020) with a smartphone using the ‘Naturblick’ app. The number of nightingale song recordings and individual engagement increased steadily and peaked in the season during the pandemic. 13,991 nightingale song recordings were generated by anonymous (64%) and non-anonymous participants (36%). As the project developed, the spatial distribution of recordings expanded (from Berlin based to nationwide). The rates of species misidentifications were low, decreased in the course of the project (10–1%) and were mainly affected by vocal similarities with other bird species. This study further showed that community engagement and data quality were not directly affected by dissemination activities, but that the former was influenced by external factors and the latter benefited from the app. We conclude that CS projects using smartphone apps with an integrated pattern recognition algorithm are well suited to support bioacoustic research in ornithology. Based on our findings, we recommend setting up CS projects over the long term to build an engaged community which generates high data quality for robust scientific conclusions.

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“…The outcomes of CS projects have been categorized by Shirk et al (2012) into outcomes for research (e.g., scientific findings), outcomes for the system (e.g., influencing policies), and outcomes for individual participants. The latter outcomes, among others, may relate to the development of new skills, to increasing scientific literacy, to empowerment, and to changing attitudes and behavior (Land-Zandstra, Agnello, and Gültekin 2021;Haywood 2016;Stepenuck and Green 2015;Brouwer and Hessels 2019).…”

Section: Citizen Science Outcomesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water Hardness in the Eye of the Beholder: Exploring Links between Central Softening, Customer Perception and Behavior, and Citizen Science

Brouwer¹,

Bouziotas²

2022

CSTP

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Despite the significant growth of citizen science (CS) initiatives in number, scale, and scope, few studies have taken an empirical approach to studying the outcomes for individual participants. This paper analyzes these outcomes within the drinking water domain and assesses to what extent, if at all, CS participation leads to more profound perception and behavior change as compared with non-CS participation, i.e., the control group. Our empirical research is based around a CS project studying the hardness and lime deposition of drinking water in the Flemish Waarmaarde area, where, during the project period, water hardness was lowered through the installation of a central softener. The CS participants performed two hardness measurement rounds, both prior and following the softener installation. To monitor the difference in perception and behavior between CS participants and non-CS participants, both before and after this intervention, complementary quantitative surveys were conducted at three different stages (baseline and pre-and post-soft ener installation). The results showed that the central softening of water can lead to significant positive shifts in the perception of, among other factors, hardness, quality, and confidence in the water utility. For several factors, this shift is more profound among CS participants compared with the control group. The same pattern is observed when examining behavior, evidenced for instance in the frequency of use of calcium-removing products.

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Participants in Citizen Science

Cited by 71 publications

References 32 publications

Citizen science project characteristics: Connection to participants’ gains in knowledge and skills

Citizen science project characteristics: Connection to participants’ gains in knowledge and skills

Community engagement and data quality: best practices and lessons learned from a citizen science project on birdsong

Water Hardness in the Eye of the Beholder: Exploring Links between Central Softening, Customer Perception and Behavior, and Citizen Science

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