Online community and citizen science (CCS) projects have broadened access to scientific research and enabled different forms of participation in biodiversity research; however, little is known about whether and how such opportunities are taken up by young people (aged 5–19). Furthermore, when they do participate, there is little research on whether their online activity makes a tangible contribution to scientific research. We addressed these knowledge gaps using quantitative analytical approaches and visualisations to investigate 249 youths’ contributions to CCS on the iNaturalist platform, and the potential for the scientific use of their contributions. We found that nearly all the young volunteers’ observations were ‘verifiable’ (included a photo, location, and date/time) and therefore potentially useful to biodiversity research. Furthermore, more than half were designated as ‘Research Grade’, with a community agreed-upon identification, making them more valuable and accessible to biodiversity science researchers. Our findings show that young volunteers with lasting participation on the platform and those aged 16–19 years are more likely to have a higher proportion of Research Grade observations than younger, or more ephemeral participants. This study enhances our understanding of young volunteers’ contributions to biodiversity research, as well as the important role professional scientists and data users can play in helping verify youths’ contributions to make them more accessible for biodiversity research.
more »
« less
Exploring the participation of young citizen scientists in scientific research: The case of iNaturalist
Online citizen science projects have broadened options for accessing science and enabled different forms of participation in scientific research for adult and young volunteers. Yet, little is known regarding participation patterns among youth participants. Quantitative approaches were used to investigate the contribution of 183 young volunteers to citizen science on the iNaturalist platform and the participation behaviour that relates to their contribution. The participants accessed and used iNaturalist as part of one-day field-based events (bioblitzes) facilitated by museums. Compared to the observation behaviour of all iNaturalist users, as documented on the platform, the young volunteers observe fewer plants and birds, and more molluscs, arachnids and insects. The average daily contributions of young volunteers were found to be positively associated with a large proportion of active days on iNaturalist and a systematic contribution behaviour, yet negatively related to a long duration on the platform. This study enhances our understanding of young volunteers’ contributions to citizen science and provides insights for research on participation in online citizen science. Our findings have implications on how museums design the field-based events to encourage follow-up systematic participation and maintain active contribution.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1647276
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10213529
- Editor(s):
- Lepczyk, Christopher A.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- PLOS ONE
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 1932-6203
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- e0245682
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
In this paper, we describe the results of an online field experiment examining the impacts of messaging about task novelty on the volume of volunteers’ contributions to an online citizen science project. Encouraging volunteers to provide a little more content as they work is an attractive strategy to increase the community’s output. Prior research found that an important motivation for participation in online citizen science is the wonder of being the first person to observe a particular image. To appeal to this motivation, a pop-up message was added to an online citizen science project that alerted volunteers when they were the first to annotate a particular image. Our analysis reveals that new volunteers who saw these messages increased the volume of annotations they contributed. The results of our study suggest an additional strategy to increase the amount of work volunteers contribute to online communities and citizen science projects specifically.more » « less
-
Building community with rural and underrepresented groups has been a challenge in the field of citizen science. At the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a team of scientists, educators, Extension professionals, and evaluators have joined efforts to take on this challenge across Alaska. The goals for Arctic Harvest-Public Participation in Scientific Research are to: 1) investigate how shifts in environmental conditions affect the fate of subsistence berries and timing of berry loss from plants in fall and winter across Alaska; and 2) improve the participation in and effectiveness of citizen science across diverse audiences, particularly at high latitudes where a high proportion of communities have populations underrepresented in STEM. We present the assets that collaboration across a land grant university brought to the table, and the Winterberry Citizen Science program design elements we have developed to engage our 1080+ volunteer berry citizen scientists ages three through elder across urban and rural, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and formal and informal learning settings. Our interdisciplinary team developed and implemented a program that provides in-person or online support for berry monitoring and data collection, and accommodates different age levels and settings. We also developed and tested an innovative program model that weaves storytelling throughout the citizen science learning cycle, from berries stories from the larger community, to stories of the citizen science process, to stories developed from berry data being collected and applied to future scenarios in a changing climate. The variety of program modifications we created have been highly effective helping reach a variety of settings and age levels. In both informal and formal learning environments in our first two years of the program we have had 568 pre-K and elementary-aged (age 3-12), 424 secondary-aged (age 12-18) youth participants and 107 adults (ages 18+), with 44% of participants coming from groups underrepresented in STEM, and 100% of groups completing berry monitoring throughout the fall. These results highlight the importance of designing the citizen science program with cultural relevance, program delivery options, and relationships between participants and scientists, while remaining committed to making a substantial scientific contribution.more » « less
-
Abstract 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.more » « less
-
Elmer Ottis Wooton (1865–1945) was one of the most important early botanists to work in the Southwestern United States, contributing a great deal of natural history knowledge and botanical research on the flora of New Mexico that shaped many naturalists and scientists for generations. The extensive Wooton legacy includes herbarium collections that he and his famous student Paul Carpenter Standley (1884–1963), prolific botanist and explorer, used for the first Flora of New Mexi co by Wooten and Standley 1915 , along with resources covering botany and range management strategies for the northern Chihuahuan Desert, and an extensive, yet to be digitized, historical archive of correspondence, field notes, vegetation sketches, photographs, and lantern slides, all from his travels and field work in the region. Starting in 1890, the most complete set of Wooton’s herbarium collections were deposited in the NMC herbarium at New Mexico State University (NMSU), and his archives, now stored in a Campus library, have together been underutilized, offline resources. The goals of this ongoing project are to secure, preserve, and promote Wooton’s important historical resources, by fleshing out the botanical history of the region, raising appreciation of herbarium collections within the community, and emphasizing their unique role in facilitating contemporary research aimed at addressing pressing scientific questions such as vegetation responses to global climate change. Students and the general public involved in this project are engaged through hands-on activities including cataloging, databasing and digitization of nearly 10,000 herbarium specimens and Wooton’s archives. These outputs, combined with contemporary data collection and computational biology techniques from an ecological perspective, are being used to document vegetation changes in iconic, climate-sensitive, high-elevation mountainous ecosystems present in southwestern New Mexico. In a later phase of the project, a variety of public audiences will participate through interactive online story maps and citizen science programs such as iNaturalist , Notes from Nature , and BioBlitz . Images of herbarium specimens will be shared via an online database and other relevant biodiversity portals ( Symbiota , iDigBio , JStor ) Community members reached through this project will be better-informed citizens, who may go on to become new stewards of natural history collections, with the potential to influence policies safeguarding the future of our planet’s biodiversity. More locally, the project will support the management of Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, which was established in 2014 to protect the area's human and environmental resources, and for which knowledge and data are currently limited.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0245682
