Citizen Science Research

What is citizen science?

A collaborative effort to collect data on certain subjects in the natural world by everyday people made available for scientists to analyze.

What three citizen science projects did you try? Describe their objectives.

Ignore That! - Help researchers better understand people’s ability to ignore unnecessary information.

Shelter Dog "Rehoming" Study Wants Your Help - Citizen science project looking for pet owners for a study to help improve dog welfare.

The Plastic Tide - Help scientists figure out where the millions of tons of plastic entering our oceans every year ends up.

Road Kill reports – It is an anecdata app that tracks road kill and allows researchers better understand migration patterns and hit traveled crossing for animals. This was actually my favorite looking at the information that it provided.

What are the first few things you see or do for a citizen science project before you officially participate? Please describe at least two things, each with an example from the experiences you tried.

I looked for things that I had interest in or experience with. I have traveled many places in the past that had very bad garbage polices, and it was everywhere. The other is the love of dogs, anytime I see something dealing with them, it will automatically get my attention.
What makes a citizen science experience enjoyable and/or addicting? Please describe at least three things, each with an example from the experiences you tried (3 observations, 3 examples).
It is interesting to see the discussion of thousands of people talking about trash. It does give someone hope that people are aware of the issue and trying to figure out how to solve it.
Ignore that! was part of the games with words website and ended up taking another test that dealt with understanding words that matched. Only got a 60% but felt a foreign speaker would have a lot more trouble than I did but was an interesting test.

What makes a citizen science experience not enjoyable? Please describe at least three things, each with an example from the experiences you tried (3 observations, 3 examples).

My first observation is some of the projects are closed out or already complete. There is no real notification of this until signing up and finding there is nothing to participate in or the linked website is taken down.
The other is on the website identifying trash. It does have good instructions but when you get looking at page after page and not seeing anything. You begin to wonder if you are missing something that you should see.
Most of the tests are very academic, so every answer has to be thought about. To get a true answer on somethings it helps when the person gives you their gut reply.

Last thing was tied to the Road kill app, there is a section where people can upload pictures. I am not sure how helpful that is .