Free As In Puppies:Compensating for ICT Constraints in Citizen Science

Andrea WigginsUniversity of New Mexico & Cornell Universityandrea.wiggins@cornell.edu @AndreaWiggins

Citizen Science

A few examples

3

Related Work

✦ Participant-focused

✦ Individual learning Trumbull et al., 2000 (many more in Informal Science Education)

✦ Motivation Nov et al., 2011; Rotman et al., 2012; Raddick et al., 2009

Related Work

✦ Project-focused

✦ Typologies Cooper et al., 2007; Bonney et al., 2009; Wiggins & Crowston, 2010

✦ Data quality Sheppard & Terveen, 2011; Wiggins et al., 2011; Wiggins et al., 2012

Assumptions

Cool new ICT

More people

Better science

More data

Better data

Miracle occurs$$$

Reality

✦ There is no money

✦ Free ICT are “free as in puppies”

✦ ICT is just one part of a complex sociotechnical system

Research Question

✦ RQ: How do citizen science project organizers address key issues related to participation & data quality when resource constraints limit ICT options?

Research Question

✦ RQ: How do citizen science project organizers address key issues related to participation & data quality when resource constraints limit ICT options?

✦ Answer: Creatively!

✦ Improving participation processes

✦ Expanding participation options

✦ Investing money & time strategically

Research Design

✦ Comparative case study

✦ Theoretical sampling

✦ Project-level focus

Research Design

✦ Data

✦ Interviews

✦ Documents

✦ Participation

✦ Observation

✦ Analysis

✦ Inductive & deductive qualitative content analysis

Case Selection

✦ Same core tasks

✦ Go outside, look at stuff, submit data

✦ Similar purpose

✦ Conservation, education, research

✦ Contrasting resources

✦ eBird: 4.5 FTE, ~$300K/yr

✦ GSP & MW: 0.5/1.5 FTE, ~$15K/yr

Recruitment

✦ #1 strategy: direct in-person contact

✦ ICT solution

✦ Effortless social recommendation via existing community practices:

“This report was generated automatically by eBird v3”

✦ Alternate solution

✦ Data collected on paper

✦ Saturation marketing

Retention

✦ ICT solution

✦ Mind-blowing data visualizations

Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea)

Retention

✦ ICT solution

✦ Mind-blowing data visualizations

✦ Alternate solutions

✦ Optimize participation processes

✦ Expand participation options*

✦ New communication strategies*

*bonus research opportunities!

Data Quality

XDogbird Catbird

Data Quality

✦ ICT solution

✦ Algorithmically flag outliers for review by small army of experts

✦ Alternate solutions

✦ Hone protocols

✦ Invest in good data entry forms

✦ Use complementary data sources

Implications for Practice

✦ Good ICT is awesome - when you can afford it

✦ When you can’t...

✦ Combine available ICT with other (human, organizational) resources

✦ Unique resources often taken for granted

✦ Beware of free puppies

Implications for Policy

✦ Citizen science is growing up

✦ Valid to fund on scientific merit

✦ Need better means of evaluating scientific merit of citizen science

✦ Consider ROI of research

✦ 1 week on oceanographic research vessel for a handful of researchers

✦ 1 year of eBird & 60M global data points used by 120K people/day

Implications for CSCW

✦ When ICT options are limited, look for complementary resources & compensatory strategies

✦ Opportunity for cross-context comparisons

✦ Online communities

✦ Distributed scientific work

✦ Peer production

Questions?✦ Research made

possible by...

✦ eBird

✦ The Great Sunf

✦

✦ U.S. NSF

VOSS-0943049, SOCS-0968470, & OCI-0830944

✦ Awesome CSCW reviewers

✦ My dissertation committee