PhD Dissertation

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Citizen science 

Citizen science is the practice of involving the public in scientific research. Typically, community members participate in scientific research as volunteers and assist scientists in tasks such as data collection, analysis, categorization, and study design. They may also form community hobby groups dedicated to monitoring and conserving their local environment. The participation of community members in scientific research is not a new phenomenon, as humans have always been curious about their natural environment and have been observing and collecting data to understand it. However, the professionalization of science excluded the knowledge of these ‘amateur scientists’. The practice of citizen science now allows community members to contribute their knowledge to science (Silvertown, 2009).

The practice of citizen science is more common in disciplines such as environmental science, astronomy, and archeology where scientists generally need to have greater access to spatial and temporal data collecting and processing capabilities. Citizen science also benefits community members by making science more accessible, increasing scientific literacy, providing tangible ways to contribute to the public good, and empowering communities through increased civic engagement. I am interested in understanding the practices of citizen science groups monitoring and conserving local water quality. Greater citizen science activity has been shown to be positively correlated with stronger watershed systems and better water quality. Given the current global water crisis, it is timely to ask how we can make citizen science practices measurably stronger. 

Collaboration in Citizen Science

In my pursuit of understanding citizen science water quality monitoring practices, I conducted multiple empirical studies with various citizen science groups in Central Pennsylvania to comprehend the motivations, backgrounds, practices, and challenges faced by citizen scientists. My research highlighted some key challenges that citizen-based water quality monitoring groups face such as a lack of appropriate technical infrastructure for data management, insufficient protocols for ensuring data quality control and assurance, and limited opportunities for community engagement and visibility (Gupta et al., 2022b). These challenges lead to citizen science data and work becoming undervalued and under-leveraged by the government and decision-makers. These findings are consistent with previous research on citizen science, which also explored similar challenges of citizen science, however, there is a lack of design research on ways to address these challenges. 

To explore design solutions that could potentially address these key challenges and make citizen science activity more visible to the broader community, it was important to first gain a more comprehensive understanding of citizen science practices and these challenges for different types of groups across different regions of the United States. My research revealed that citizen-based water quality monitoring is a highly collaborative and socio-technical activity, with collaborations between volunteers and scientists, as well as between volunteers within a citizen science group, being critical to the seamless functioning of the groups. Previous work in this area has also highlighted the importance of these collaborations and their role in sustaining volunteer engagement and improving learning of the water quality monitoring activity. However, I noticed that while these collaborations were deemed essential by both the groups themselves and the academic literature, there were no instances of inter-group collaboration or collaboration between distributed citizen science groups.

I argue that facilitating collaboration between distributed groups can potentially be helpful in addressing the key challenges of citizen science through the exchange of knowledge, information, and resources between groups. My argument is grounded in empirical data on how different groups approach these challenges, and in previous literature on distributed collaboration in scientific teams. My research found that larger groups with access to more resources and volunteers had worked on developing methods to address challenges such as data quality control and assurance, while smaller groups with fewer resources generally struggled to find solutions. It seemed apparent that collaborations between such groups could be helpful in exchanging information and addressing these challenges; however, these groups never contemplated building such collaborative networks outside of their region. This was because water quality is usually considered a regional issue where citizen science groups tend to form networks with other regional groups, but don’t view building networks outside of their regions as essential. On the other hand, research on distributed collaboration, especially in the context of distributed scientific teams, is well-established and has shown the significance of distributed and interdisciplinary collaborations to address complex problems (Gupta et al., 2022a).

I draw upon this work to design “collaboratories for citizen science,” which are virtual laboratories for citizen scientists that support sharing information on various technical resources necessary to support water quality monitoring activity, as well as social interaction features to foster the building of networks and discussions between diverse groups. The design of this collaboratory seeks to strengthen existing collaborations and provide an opportunity to build new collaborations outside of groups’ existing networks by providing seamless ways to foster discussions and resource sharing within the existing groups. The goal of this collaboratory is to strengthen and empower citizen science groups to support each other and build a strong community that can not only amplify their current practices but also make the phenomenon of citizen science more visible to the broader community.

Future Research: Citizen Science and HCI

Citizen science is an area of study that is currently under-leveraged in the HCI research community, with limited interest and awareness. However, citizen science has tremendous potential to advance scientific research and strengthen communities worldwide. The proliferation and advancement of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have created more widespread interest in utilizing citizen science in various domains such as medicine, healthcare, and humanities. HCI research can contribute to the development of ICTs that support citizen science, thus accelerating innovations in science, community learning, and social well-being (Preece, 2016). My goal is to establish citizen science as a prominent area of research in the HCI community by conducting design research to make it more inclusive and push the agenda of making science more accessible to the public, while also understanding and designing for privacy and security in citizen science. I have conducted preliminary research on inclusivity and privacy in citizen science through a meta-analysis of the design space in this domain, and I plan to conduct further empirical research to better understand these aspects of citizen science.

I am eager to build on my current work on citizen science and also draw on my experience of working with interdisciplinary and diverse groups of people to further research other complex socio-technical challenges. 

 

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