Citizen science projects are meant to involve the public in research, but researchers are starting to ask if the name itself is exclusionary. Could “citizen” discourage Indigenous people and immigrants from participating? Does “science” scare away non-scientists?
A new study suggests the label has little effect on participation, and that the experience of participating in a project is more important to keeping users engaged, regardless of label.
Researchers in the Department of Communication in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences joined a project team in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in designing a two-week study of new users of Habitat Network (HN), a now-discontinued online platform. HN allowed users to create and share maps of their yards, highlighting sustainability efforts like composting, pollinator-friendly plantings and low- or no-mow areas.
For the study, “Does Terminology Matter? Effects of the Citizen Science Label on Participation in a Wildlife Conservation Online Platform,” published Jan. 29 in Citizen Science: Theory and Practice, the researchers divided new users into two otherwise identical experiences – with one framed as “citizen science” and the other framed as “environmental stewardship.”
The research team collected data from surveys at the start and end of the project and tracked what users did on their maps – for instance, how many reported putting environmentally friendly elements in their yards and keeping their cats indoors.
“So much of the research that’s focused on how people respond to labels is all about asking people surveys and what they think and so forth,” said the study’s lead author, Poppy McLeod, professor of communication (CALS) and faculty fellow in the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability. “We had actual behaviors. We could see how engaged people were. We could see how much time they spent in the application and what they did.”
Researchers found little evidence of the framing affecting users’ engagement with the tool, their environmental interest or their sense of community.
“We think that people were reacting to what they were doing in the project, more so than what it was called,” McLeod said. “We found that the main results we got were more related to what kind of project they said they thought it was, rather than how it was officially labeled.”
To users, HN’s platform with its colorful maps and social elements may not have appeared to be systematic data collection, which may explain why some users reported perceiving the project as environmental stewardship, even if they had been assigned to the citizen science framing.
The researchers further explored if these factors varied by participants’ gender. They hypothesized that women would be more engaged than men in the environmental stewardship framing and men would be more engaged in the citizen science framing.
“There’s a very long history in the fields of communication, social psychology and cognitive psychology about the pairing of science and gender and how science and scientists are most often associated in people’s minds with male characteristics,” McLeod said.
The data did confirm their hypothesis about the environmental stewardship framing, but they did not find a gender difference in the citizen science framing, possibly because users perceived the experience as environmental stewardship, regardless of its framing.
McLeod said project designers should consider the “citizen science” label but shouldn’t stop there.
“Does the exclusionary problem crop up in other ways?” she said. “No matter what you’re calling it, do people still feel that they belong here, that they’re able to have good interactions with each other?”
The study’s co-authors include Jonathon Schuldt, professor of communication in CALS and the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, executive director of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, and an Atkinson Faculty Fellow; Hwanseok Song, Ph.D. ’18, an assistant professor of communication at Purdue University; Rhiannon Crain, former HN project leader and current executive director at the Santa Cruz Children’s Museum of Discovery; and Janis Dickinson, emeritus professor of natural resources and the environment in CALS and an Atkinson Faculty Fellow.
The research was supported by an Academic Venture Fund grant from Cornell Atkinson; the Nature Conservancy; and the ³Ô¹ÏÍøÕ¾ Science Foundation.
