What’s in it for citizen scientists? An analysis of participant’s gains from a democratisation perspective

Abstract

Citizen science projects optimise the democratisation of theproduction of scientific knowledge. In these initiatives, researchprocesses do not rely solely on scientists’ but on citizens’ engagementlikewise with benefits on both sides. As previous work shows, thedemocratisation perspective of citizen science projects might beviewed critically as some groups of citizens tend to beoverrepresented in these initiatives while other are left out. This paperexplores the claim of democratisation and the citizens’ benefits basedon four citizen science projects in the fields of astrophysics andparticle physics on the citizen science platform Zooniverse. Besides ageneral engagement strategy, the citizen science projects addressedtwo groups specifically, the elderly and people with visualimpairments. The claim for democratisation is reflected in the analysisof citizens’ demographic variables as an indicator for accessibility ofthe research projects. We used a pre-post design with questionnaireson science attitudes, motivations, skills, self-efficacy, and knowledgeto assess what citizen scientists gained from participating in theproject. The demographic analysis of the data reveals that participantswere quite heterogeneous and that people who feel that they belongto a group that is discriminated against are particularly motivated toparticipate in citizen science projects. In terms of benefits, the resultsindicate knowledge and scientific skills gains, but no changes on other evaluative dimensions. Their attitude towards science was, in general,already rather positive when joining the projects, thus not leavingmuch room for change. These results confirm the importance of andcall for a diversified citizen science engagement strategy and showthat even in citizen science projects where the citizens’ task is limitedto classifying data lead to scientific knowledge and skills gains.