Broadening Participation in Citizen Science Campaigns

While successful citizen-science campaigns have demonstrable effectiveness in engaging their participants in scientific projects, and research suggests that participants learn about both scientific processes and content, many campaigns struggle to engage participants from communities that have been historically under-represented in science. This is both puzzling and unfortunate: puzzling because citizen-scientist programs are often built around phenomena that are part of many people's daily lives and unfortunate because these programs offer a new and effective approach to scientific outreach and education that could, potentially, offer new avenues to include historically underserved communities in science. This poster will explore the demographics of several well-known citizen science programs, compare them to national trends, and use this comparison to suggest goals for diversifying citizen-science participation. It will review research on minority participation in formal and informal geoscience and science education programs to identify barriers to broader participation and offer some strategies for diversifying citizen science programs. It will highlight participatory research methodologies as used in resource conservation and public health, and explore their relevance to citizen science program. The overall goal of the poster is not to suggest a singular answer or even promote best practices, since much of what works well is likely to be place-based and context dependence. Instead, we seek to raise questions, offer approaches and spark a dialogue among citizen-science practitioners that will encourage new approaches and ultimately result in broader engagement in citizen-science campaigns.