Strategies Employed by Citizen Science Programs to Increase the Credibility of Their Data

Amy Freitag,Ryan Meyer,Liz Whiteman

doi:10.5334/cstp.6

Amy Freitag, Ryan Meyer + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.5334/cstp.6

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Abstract

The success of citizen science in producing important and unique data is attracting interest from scientists and resource managers. Nonetheless, questions remain about the credibility of citizen science data. Citizen science programs desire to meet the same standards of credibility as academic science, but they usually work within a different context, for example, training and managing significant numbers of volunteers with limited resources. We surveyed the credibility-building strategies of 30 citizen science programs that monitor environmental aspects of the California coast. We identified a total of twelve strategies: Three that are applied during training and planning; four that are applied during data collection; and five that are applied during data analysis and program evaluation. Variation in the application of these strategies by program is related to factors such as the number of participants, the focus on group or individual work, and the time commitment required of volunteers. The structure of each program and available resources require program designers to navigate tradeoffs in the choices of their credibility strategies. Our results illustrate those tradeoffs and provide a framework for the necessary discussions between citizen science programs and potential users of their data—including scientists and decision makers—about shared expectations for credibility and practical approaches for meeting those expectations. This article has been corrected here: http://dx.doi.org/10.5334/cstp.91

Highlights

While government-based natural resources monitoring is notoriously hard to fund and implement owing to a variety of political and practical challenges (Biber 2013), recent reviews suggest that citizen science has great potential to meet monitoring needs cost effectively (Aceves-Bueno 2015; Berkes 2009; Connors et al 2012; Danielsen et al 2007; Roy et al 2012)
Several citizen science groups participated as partners in early monitoring efforts, but many others are operating in the region
We included only activities that constitute a formal component of a project and which project leaders reported built credibility

Summary

Introduction

While government-based natural resources monitoring is notoriously hard to fund and implement owing to a variety of political and practical challenges (Biber 2013), recent reviews suggest that citizen science has great potential to meet monitoring needs cost effectively (Aceves-Bueno 2015; Berkes 2009; Connors et al 2012; Danielsen et al 2007; Roy et al 2012). A recent survey of 83 citizen science projects found that more than 40% had generated data that were used by natural resource managers (Aceves-Bueno et al 2015). While citizen science is gaining legitimacy in decision making and in mainstream science, questions about the credibility of citizen science results are still common (e.g., Henderson 2012; Nature 2015; Wiggins et al 2013). Potential audiences such as scientists and resource managers must recognize the credibility of citizen science in order to use its data. While citizen science groups have been urged to explicitly consider credibility (Wiggins et al 2013), practical guidance for what such consideration should entail is still limited

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