This is an invitation to complete a survey that is available at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7XN5MQG
This survey will present you stories about different forms of public participation in research. Different activities within this area of public participation in research are now called “citizen science” and we would like to hear what your opinion is about each activity.
As you go through these cases, we ask you to consider “To what degree would you identify this as citizen science?” We encourage you to consider your own opinions and views – there are no correct or incorrect ways of assessing every case. Your views matter!
We will ask you to decide to what degree the case that you have read describes a citizen science activity and your level of confidence about your decision. Because the cases are presented in a random order you can do as many stories as you wish and the results will be valuable for the study – please indicate in the checkbox that you want to complete the survey and submit your response.
You can also stop at any point and return later to complete the survey – just use the same link https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/7XN5MQG
The only identifiable information that we ask from you is your email address, in case we need to follow up on any of the qualitative answers you provide. The email address will not be related to any other analysis and will be discarded within 3 months.
Further information
For each story that is presented, you will be asked to set a slider to a level that matches your view about the degree that the described case should be considered as a citizen science activity, as well as describing your level of confidence. You will also see an option to state if you want to describe the activity or explain your decision, as this can help us in developing the characteristics.
Please do as many stories as you wish – ten, twenty or all – the stories are presented in randomised order, the survey is designed so that you can come back to it later if you wish, or you can decide at any stage to leave. Any number of evaluations will be valuable.
Reading all 50 cases can take up to 60 minutes, and we know that this is a very big commitment. Please feel free to stop at any point – your results will be useful even if you complete only a few cases (as they are displayed in a different order to different people). You can click “exit” at the top, the link will be saved and you can then come back and complete the study with the same link.
The survey will help the EU-Citizen.Science project and the European Citizen Science Association to develop short briefing that can be used by research funders, policy bodies, and scientists, to decide which activities, and under which conditions, should be considered to be citizen science.
For any queries on this survey, please contact Prof Muki Haklay (m.haklay[at]ucl.ac.uk).
