Citizen science

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Draft

I will start working on this piece on January 2012 and try to do some quick literature review, in particular with respect to topics like "how do participants learn", "in what respect are citizens creative", "what is their motivation", "how do communities work".

- Daniel K. Schneider 16:43, 23 December 2011 (CET)

Introduction

Citizen science does not have a uniquely accepted definition. It could mean:

  • Participation of citizen for collection of data, for example observation of animals, pollution, or plant growth.
  • Participation of citizen for analyzing data, in various forms. For example, some provide computing power (a typical example is the captcha mechanism in this wiki for curbing spam). Another would be helping to recognize patterns (e.g. forms of galaxies)
  • Dissemination of scientific thought and result in schools in order to promote engagement with science or with the intent to help updating the curriculum.
  • Amateur science, i.e. citizen create scientific thoughts and other products.
  • Citizen assessment of science and scientific projects.

See also: e-science

Types of citizen science

The variety of citizen science programs is important with respect to many criteria, e.g.: aims, target population, locations (schools, museums, media, Internet groups), forms, subject areas, tasks, etc.

Cooper et al. (2007) distinguish between the citizen science model and the participatory action research model. The former uses citizens as data collectors and will receive recognition (including results of the study). Participatory action research “begins with the interests of participants, who work collaboratively with professional researchers through all steps of the scientific process to find solutions to problems of community relevance Finn (1994) outlined three key elements of participatory research: (1) it responds to the experiences and needs of the community, (2) it fosters collaboration between researchers and community in research activities, and (3) it promotes common knowledge and increases community awareness. Although citizen science can have research and education goals similar to many participatory action research projects (Finn 1994 and below), citizen science is distinct from participatory action research in that it occurs at larger scales and typically does not incorporate iterative or collaborative action.”. However, some citizen science project do actively try to engage citizens to participate as we shall try to show below.

Wiggins and Crowston (2011) identified “five mutually exclusive and exhaustive types of projects, which [they] labelled Action, Conservation, Investigation, Virtual and Education. Action projects employ volunteer-initiated participatory action research to encourage participant intervention in local concerns. Conservation projects address natural resource management goals, involving citizens in stewardship for outreach and increased scope. Investigation projects focus on scientific research goals in a physical setting, while Virtual projects have goals similar to Investigation projects, but are entirely ICT-mediated and differ in a number of other characteristics. Finally, Education projects make education and outreach primary goals”.

Wiggins and Crowston (2012) then created two typologies of citizen science projets, using data from 63 projects. A first typology is based on twelve participation tasks, i.e. Observation, Species identification, Classification or tagging, Data entry, Finding entities, Measurement, Specimen/sample collection, Sample analysis, Site selection &/or description, Geolocation, Photography, Data analysis, and Number of tasks. The other typology is based on ten project goals, i.e. Science, Management, Action, Education, Conservation, Monitoring, Restoration, Outreach, Stewardship, and Discovery.

Participation clusters:

  1. Involve observation and identification tasks, but never require analysis. (13)
  2. Involve observation, data entry, and analysis, but include no locational tasks such as site selection or geolocation (6)
  3. Engage participants in a variety of tasks, the only participation task not represented is sample analysis (17)
  4. Engage the public in every participation task considered (15)
  5. Involve reporting, using observations, species identification, and data entry, but with very few additional participation opportunities (12)

Goal clusters:

  1. Afforded nearly equal weights (midpoint of the scale or higher) to each of the goal areas
  2. Most strongly focused on science
  3. Science is the most important goal, but education, monitoring, and discovery are only slightly less important on average
  4. Science, conservation, monitoring and stewardship are most important, while discovery is less valued than in the preceding clusters
  5. Outlier

For other typologies, see Wiggins and Crowston (2012).

Topics in the study of citizen science projects

Motivation

Motivation and motivation in education are complex constructs. A typical general model includes several components. E.g. Herzberg's (1959) five component model of job satisfaction includes achievement, recognition, work itself, responsibility, and advancement.

Some recent research by Raddick et al. (2010) about motivations of participants in cyberscience projects analyzed free forum messages and structured interviews. The first mentioned categories include the subject (astronomy), contribution and vastness. Learning (3%) and Science (1%) were minor. Looking at all responses, the same motivations - subject (46%), contribution (22%), vastness (24%) - still dominate, but other motivations exceed 10%, e.g. beauty (16%), fun (11%) and learning (10%).

It might be interesting to also look at personality traits of participants. E.g. Furnham et al. (1999) in a study about personality and work motivation found out that extroverts on the Eysenck Personality Profile correlate with a preference for Herzberg's motivators, whereas "neuroticism" correlates with so-called hygiene factors, i.e. the environment. In other words, extraverts are rather motivated by intrinsic factors whereas others by extrinsic ones.

Virtual organisations for citizen science

An important variant of citizen science uses citizens as helpers for research. “Citizen science is a form of organisation design for collaborative scientific research involving scientists and volunteers, for which internet-based modes of participation enable massive virtual collaboration by thousands of members of the public.” (Wiggins and Crowson, 2010:148). The authors argue that virtual organisations for citizen science are a bit different from other virtual organizations: “The project level of group interaction is distinct from those of small work groups and organisations (Grudin, 1994), which has implications for organisation design efforts. Project teams and communities of practice can be distinguished by their goal orientation among other features (Wenger, 1999), but empirical observation of citizen science VOs to date indicates a hybrid ‘community of purpose’ might better describe many projects, with characteristics of both a project team and a community of practice or interest.” (p 159).

Wiggins and Crowson then suggest a conceptual model of citizen science VOs:

Source: Wiggins and Crowston, Preprint. Reproduced without permission

Learning in citizen science projects

Luther et al. (2009) related learning in citizen science projects to Wikipedia and open source (OSS) participation. “researchers have identified some surprising commonalities between Wikipedia and OSS worth mentioning here. The first is legitimate peripheral participation (LPP), a theory of social learning which holds that novices in a community of practice may transform into experts by observing expert practices and taking on increasingly complex work (Lave & Wenger, 1991). In the case of Wikipedia, a user may begin by fixing typos, gradually making more substantial edits until she is writing entire articles from scratch (Brynt et al. 2005). In OSS, bug reporters may write a few lines of code to fix a glitch and eventually learn to code new modules”.

The Caise report argues that “educational research shows that people have greater motivation to engage and learn if the subject matter is directly relevant to their lives and interests and/or if the learning process is interactive—one in which the learner can directly affect the learning process, content, and/or outcomes of the experience (Falk 2001)”.

Evaluation of informal science education

Informal science education refers mostly to larger or smaller top-down initiatives that aim to raise interest for STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. As an example, “The Informal Science Education (ISE) program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) invests in projects designed to increase interest in, engagement with, and understanding of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by individuals of all ages and backgrounds through self-directed learning experiences” (Ucko, 2008: 9)

Dierking (2008:19), a contributor to the US Framework for Evaluating Impacts of Informal Science Education Projectsin Friedman (2008), suggests that a project should be able to answer at least the following questions at the outset of initiating a project:

  1. What audience impacts will this project facilitate?
  2. What approach/type of project will best enable us to accomplish these goals and why do we feel that this is the best approach to take?
  3. How will we know whether the activities of the project accomplished these intended goals and objectives and with what evidence will we support the assertion that they did?
  4. How will we ensure that unanticipated outcomes are also documented?

This US "Informal education and outreach framework" (Uko 2008:11, Dierking 2008:21) identifies six impact categories with respect to both public audiences and professional audiences.

The Informal Education and Outreach Framework (Uko 2008:11, Dierking 2008:21)
Impact Category Public Audiences Professional Audiences Generic Definition
Awareness, knowledge or understanding (of) STEM concepts, processes, or careers Informal STEM education/outreach research or practice. Measurable demonstration of assessment of, change in, or exercise of awareness, knowledge, understanding of a particular scientific topic, concept, phenomena, theory, or careers central to the project.
Engagement or interest (in) STEM concepts, processes, or careers Advancing informal STEM education/outreach field Measurable demonstration of assessment of, change in, or exercise of engagement/interest in a particular scientific topic, concept, phenomena, theory, or careers central to the project.
Attitude (towards) STEM-related topic or capabilities Informal STEM education/outreach research or practice Measurable demonstration of assessment of, change in, or exercise of attitude toward a particular scientific topic, concept, phenomena, theory, or careers central to the project or one’s capabilities relative to these areas. Although similar to awareness/interest/engagement, attitudes refer to changes in relatively stable, more intractable constructs such as empathy for animals and their habitats, appreciation for the role of scientists in society or attitudes toward stem cell research.
Behavior (related to) STEM concepts, processes, or careers Informal STEM education/outreach research or practice Measurable demonstration of assessment of, change in, or exercise of behavior related to a STEM topic. These types of impacts are particularly relevant to projects that are environmental in nature or have some kind of a health science focus since action is a desired outcome.
Skills (based on) STEM concepts, processes, or careers Informal STEM education/outreach research or practice Measurable demonstration of the development and/or reinforcement of skills, either entirely new ones or the reinforcement, even practice, of developing skills. These tend to be procedural aspects of knowing, as opposed to the more declarative aspects of knowledge impacts. Although they can sometimes manifest as engagement, typically observed skills include a level of depth and skill such as engaging in scientific inquiry skills (observing, classifying, exploring, questioning, predicting, or experimenting), as well as developing/practicing very specific skills related to the use of scientific instruments and devices (e.g. using microscopes or telescopes successfully).
Other Project specific Project specific Project specific

From this table, Dierking (2008:23) then derives a simple worksheet for Developing Intended Impacts, Indicators & Evidence

worksheet for Developing Intended Impacts, Indicators & Evidence
ISE Category of Impact Potential indicators Evidence that impact was attained
Awareness, knowledge or understanding of STEM concepts, processes or careers
Engagement or interest in STEM concepts, processes, or careers
Attitude towards STEM-related topics or capabilities
Behavior resulting from experience
Skills based on experience
Other (describe)

Software

Guides

Robert D. Stevenson et al. (2003) at the University of Massachusetts have developed open source software tools that enable nonexperts to produce customised field guides. Field guides are used to identify species, a task that is common to many projects.

  • R.D. Stevenson, et al. Electronic field guides and user communities in the eco-informatics revolution. Conserv. Ecol., 7 (2003), p. 3.

Data collection

Pathfinder (Luther et al. 2009: abstract) “is an online environment that challenges this traditional division of labor by providing tools for citizen scientists to collaboratively discuss and analyze the data they collect.”. The design of pathfinder was inspired by three main phenomena: Complex online participation (e.g. Wikipedia or OSS), Argument mapping systems such as Compendium and social data analysis (SDA), e.g. the sense.us system. There are two main components to Pathfinder: tracks (data sets) and discussions. Both are linked. In addition, pathfinder allows to annotate a pattern or trend found in data set as finding. Finally, every data set (trac)k page also contains comments and a basic wiki. The latter can be used for general casual discussions. “The discussions component of Pathfinder allows users to engage in collaborative, structured analyses around tracks. Each discussion page is organized into three sections: the topic, responses to the topic, and an overview of these responses, displayed below the topic but before the responses themselves” (Luther et al., 2009: 242). Responses can be tagged as so-called "Milestones", i.e. Questions, Hypotheses, Evidence (Pro or Con), Background, Prediction, Conclusion, or To-Do.

Ellul et al (2011) developed a Flexible Database-Centric Platform for Citizen Science Data Capture.


Links

General

  • Citizen Science (Scientific American). Also includes a larger list of projects.

Organizations

Index pages

On-line environments

Evaluation

Bibliography

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