Step by step towards citizen science — deconstructing youth participation in BioBlitzes
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Lorke J
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7612973 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The bulk of research on citizen science participants is project centric, based on an assumption that volunteers experience a single project. Contrary to this assumption, survey responses (n = 3894) and digital trace data (n = 3649) from volunteers, who collectively engaged in 1126 unique projects, revealed that multiproject participation was the norm. Only 23% of volunteers were singletons (who participated in only one project). The remaining multiproject participants were split evenly between discipline specialists (39%) and discipline spanners (38% joined projects with different disciplinary topics) and unevenly between mode specialists (52%) and mode spanners (25% participated in online and offline projects). Public engagement was narrow: The multiproject participants were eight times more likely to be White and five times more likely to hold advanced degrees than the general population. We propose a volunteer-centric framework that explores how the dynamic accumulation of experiences in a project ecosystem can support broad learning objectives and inclusive citizen science.
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Project description:Online citizen science offers a low-cost way to strengthen the infrastructure for scientific research and engage members of the public in science. As the sustainability of online citizen science projects depends on volunteers who contribute their skills, time, and energy, the objective of this study is to investigate effects of motivational factors on the quantity and quality of citizen scientists' contribution. Building on the social movement participation model, findings from a longitudinal empirical study in three different citizen science projects reveal that quantity of contribution is determined by collective motives, norm-oriented motives, reputation, and intrinsic motives. Contribution quality, on the other hand, is positively affected only by collective motives and reputation. We discuss implications for research on the motivation for participation in technology-mediated social participation and for the practice of citizen science.
| S-EPMC3972171 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Biological recording is a prominent and widely practised form of citizen science, but few studies explore long-term demographic trends in participation and knowledge production. We studied long-term demographic trends of age and gender of participants reporting to a large online citizen science multi-taxon biodiversity platform ( www.artportalen.se ). Adoption by user communities and continually developing Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) greatly increased the number of participants reporting data, but profound long-term imbalances in gender contribution across species groups persisted over time. Reporters identifying as male dominated in numbers, spent more days in the field reporting and reported more species on each field day. Moreover, an age imbalance towards older participants amplified over time. As the first long-term study of citizen participation by age and gender, our results show that it is important for citizen science project developers to account for cultural and social developments that might exclude participants, and to engage with underrepresented and younger participants. This could facilitate the breadth of engagement and learning across a larger societal landscape, ensure project longevity and biodiversity data representation (e.g. mitigate gender bias influence on the number of reports of different species groups).
| S-EPMC10692043 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The Covid-19 pandemic served as the impetus to implement activities designed to engage students in the remote instructional environment while simultaneously developing scientific literacy skills. In a high enrollment general education animal science course, numerous activities were designed to improve scientific literacy. These included specifically developed videos covering strategies for reading published science literature, the utilization of topically relevant scientific articles that captured student interest, and engaging students in a citizen science exercise on whether dogs align themselves to the Earth's magnetic field during excretion behavior. Employing pre- and post-self-perception surveys coupled with tasking students to apply their scientific literacy skills in an assessment scenario demonstrated that students' self-perception of their scientific literacy improved 30% (P < 0.05) with approximately 80% of students accurately applying their literacy skills. The citizen science study on excretory behavior was modeled on previously published findings thereby providing an opportunity to validate the published work which had indicated that dogs align their bodies in a North-South axis during excretion. The present study did not demonstrate preferential alignment to any geomagnetic orientation which emphasized to the students the need for scientific replication. Inclusion of simple activities that were relevant to students' daily lives, and providing interpretive context for those activities, resulted in improved self-perceived scientific literacy.
| S-EPMC8385872 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way large citizen science events can be carried out-reducing gatherings of large groups and shifting toward individual, small-group, and online participation. This paper aims to describe changes in participant engagement in the City Nature Challenge (CNC) in Tokyo. The CNC is a four-day international event held in April to document biodiversity in cities using an online citizen science platform, iNaturalist. To assess the impact of COVID-19, we compared the number of participants, observations, species, and identification rates in 2019 (pre-pandemic) and 2020 (during the pandemic). We also used cluster analysis to elucidate participation patterns, and we assessed changes in the geographical distribution of observation sites. The results showed: (1) the number of participants and observations decreased by 63% and 68%, respectively; however, the number of species was almost the same in the two years, and the identification rate increased 154% in 2020 relative to 2019. (2) The most enthusiastic participants contributed in similar amounts in 2019 and 2020, but participation by less enthusiastic volunteers drastically declined. (3) The spatial distribution of observation sites changed from cluster-like to scattered. Understanding participant engagement during the pandemic could help to improve data quality, reduce geographical bias in observations, maintain records, and recruit more users in future years. Online citizen science could provide opportunities for many citizens to get outside and participate in conservation science during and after the pandemic.
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Project description:Since 2012, the citizen science project 'Mückenatlas' has been supplementing the German mosquito monitoring programme with over 28,000 submissions of physical insect samples. As the factors triggering people to catch mosquitoes for science are still unknown, we analysed the influence of mass media reports on mosquito submission numbers. Based on a theoretical framework of how mass media affect citizen responsiveness, we identified five possible influencing factors related to citizen science: (i) project awareness and knowledge, (ii) attention (economy), (iii) individual characteristics of citizen scientists and targeted communication, (iv) spatial differences and varying affectedness, and (v) media landscape. Hypotheses based on these influencing factors were quantitatively and qualitatively tested with two datasets: clipping data of mass media reports (online, television, radio and print) referring to or focussing on the 'Mückenatlas', and corresponding data of 'Mückenatlas' submissions between 2014 and 2017. In general, the number of media reports positively affected the number of mosquito submissions on a temporal and spatial scale, i.e. many media reports provoke many mosquito submissions. We found that an already heightened public and media awareness of mosquito-relevant topics combined with a direct call-to-action in a media report title led to a maximum participation. Differences on federal state level, however, suggest that factors additional to quantitative media coverage trigger participation in the 'Mückenatlas', in particular the mosquito affectedness of the resident population. Lastly, media types appear to differ in their effects on the number of submissions. Our results show under which circumstances the media presence of the 'Mückenatlas' is most effective in activating people to submit mosquito samples, and thus provide advice for designing communication strategies for citizen science projects.
| S-EPMC8853470 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Gardenroots: A Citizen Science Project (2015) is the product of a needs assessment, revealing environmental quality concerns of gardeners living near hazardous waste or resource extraction activities. Participants were trained, collected garden samples for analysis, and later received their data visualized (individual and aggregated) via community events or mail. This article describes participant motivations, changes in knowledge and efficacy, and whether these depend on the mode of data sharing and visualization. Motivations were internal, and self-efficacy increased, while knowledge and satisfaction were higher in event attendees due to increased researcher contact. This reveals importance of data-sharing events, data visualizations, and participatory research processes.
| S-EPMC6726431 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The BirdNET App, a free bird sound identification app for Android and iOS that includes over 3,000 bird species, reduces barriers to citizen science while generating tens of millions of bird observations globally that can be used to replicate known patterns in avian ecology.
| S-EPMC9239458 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundRecently there has been increasing focus on monitoring pollinating insects, due to concerns about their declines, and interest in the role of volunteers in monitoring pollinators, particularly bumblebees, via citizen science.Methodology / principal findingsThe Big Bumblebee Discovery was a one-year citizen science project run by a partnership of EDF Energy, the British Science Association and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology which sought to assess the influence of the landscape at multiple scales on the diversity and abundance of bumblebees. Timed counts of bumblebees (Bombus spp.; identified to six colour groups) visiting focal plants of lavender (Lavendula spp.) were carried out by about 13 000 primary school children (7-11 years old) from over 4000 schools across the UK. 3948 reports were received totalling 26 868 bumblebees. We found that while the wider landscape type had no significant effect on reported bumblebee abundance, the local proximity to flowers had a significant effect (fewer bumblebees where other flowers were reported to be >5m away from the focal plant). However, the rate of mis-identifcation, revealed by photographs uploaded by participants and a photo-based quiz, was high.Conclusions / significanceOur citizen science results support recent research on the importance of local flocal resources on pollinator abundance. Timed counts of insects visiting a lure plant is potentially an effective approach for standardised pollinator monitoring, engaging a large number of participants with a simple protocol. However, the relatively high rate of mis-identifications (compared to reports from previous pollinator citizen science projects) highlights the importance of investing in resources to train volunteers. Also, to be a scientifically valid method for enquiry, citizen science data needs to be sufficiently high quality, so receiving supporting evidence (such as photographs) would allow this to be tested and for records to be verified.
| S-EPMC4795797 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Assessing the value of a citizen science approach for ctenophore identification
| PRJEB48037 | ENA