The motivation for citizens’ involvement in life sciences research is predicted by age and gender

Abstract

Open Science is an umbrella term encompassing multiple concepts as open access to publications, open data, open education and citizen science that aim to make science more open and transparent. Citizen science, an important facet of Open Science, actively involves nonscientists in the research process, and can potentially be beneficial for multiple actors, such as scientists, citizens, policymakers and society in general. However, the reasons that motivate different segments of the public to participate in research are still understudied. Therefore, based on data gathered from a survey conducted in Czechia, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, and the UK (N = 5,870), this study explores five types of incentives that can motivate individuals to become involved in life sciences research. The results demonstrate that men and younger individuals are more persuaded by extrinsic motives (external benefits or rewards), as compared with women and older people, who are driven by intrinsic motives (that originates from within an individual). This paper shows that specific strata of the population are differentially motivated to engage in research, thereby providing relevant knowledge for effectively designing public involvement activities that target various groups of the public in research projects.

What motivates informal carers to be actively involved in research, and what obstacles to involvement do they perceive?

“…The finding that gender was not related to the different motivational factor items also differs from earlier research, which has found that women are more driven by intrinsic motives for involvement in research than men [ 29 ]. Previous studies have also highlighted that informal caring affects women more negatively than it does men [ 15 , 51 ], which may explain why women were more motivated by family reasons.…”

“…Our results showed that certain characteristics were related to different motivations for active involvement in research. Older age seemed to be connected with an overall lower motivation, a result inconsistent with earlier research, which showed that intrinsic reasons for involvement increased throughout a person’s lifetime [ 29 ]. Again, this could possibly be explained by the complexity of informal caring, where earlier research has shown that the perceived caring burden develops and in many cases increases over time [ 23 , 50 ].…”

“…Initially, because the factor analysis showed a similar categorisation of motivation items to that of Lakomý et al [ 29 ], we considered using the same labels, i.e. extrinsic and intrinsic.…”

“…Generally, reasons behind the motivation to be involved in research by different categories of the public are understudied [ 29 ]. Motivation is usually divided into two distinct types, extrinsic (external rewards) and intrinsic motivation (fx altruism, personal interest).…”

The Role of Coping in the Wellbeing and Work-Related Quality of Life of UK Health and Social Care Workers during COVID-19

“…The gender composition of our sample is, however, largely reflective of the wider UK nursing, midwifery, social care, and social work workforce [ 57 , 58 , 59 ] and also of other countries’ health and social care workforce, which is mainly female, with lower pay and working conditions [ 60 ]. Another or accompanying explanation for the gender composition of respondents is also possible; females may have been more motivated to complete the survey, as recent research has shown that males are more interested in extrinsic motivations when participating in life sciences research, whereas females also value intrinsic motivations, such as helping society [ 61 ]. Finally, our survey did not assess medical or mental health conditions or any treatments that participants were undergoing (e.g., depression and antidepressant medication), which could have impacted upon the wellbeing and WRQOL scores in our sample.…”