Presentation at CSCW 2013 in San Antonio, TX.

1. Free As In Puppies:
Compensating for ICT
Constraints in Citizen Science
Andrea Wiggins
University of New Mexico & Cornell University
andrea.wiggins@cornell.edu @AndreaWiggins

2. Citizen Science

3. A few examples
3

4. 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

5. 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

6. Assumptions
More
people
Cool Miracle More Better
$$$ new occurs data science
ICT
Better
data

7. Reality
✦ There is no money
✦ Free ICT are “free as in puppies”
✦ ICT is just one part of a complex
sociotechnical system

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

9. 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

10. Research Design
✦ Comparative case study
✦ Theoretical sampling
✦ Project-level focus

11. Research Design
✦ Data
✦ Interviews
✦ Documents
✦ Participation
✦ Observation
✦ Analysis
✦ Inductive & deductive qualitative
content analysis

12. 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

16. 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

17. Retention
✦ ICT solution
✦ Mind-blowing data visualizations

18. Indigo Bunting (Passerina cyanea)

19. Retention
✦ ICT solution
✦ Mind-blowing data visualizations
✦ Alternate solutions
✦ Optimize participation processes
✦ Expand participation options*
✦ New communication strategies*
*bonus research opportunities!

20. Data Quality
X
Dogbird Catbird

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. Questions?
✦ Research made
possible by...
✦ U.S. NSF
✦ eBird
VOSS-0943049,
✦ The Great Sunf SOCS-0968470, &
OCI-0830944
✦ Awesome CSCW
✦ reviewers
✦ Mydissertation
committee