How accurate is citizen science? Evaluating public assessments of coastal water quality
(2022) In Environmental Policy and Governance 32(2). p.149-157- Abstract
Citizen science is changing society's contribution to research projects worldwide. Non-experts are no longer just spectators, they are active participants and supporters of scientific work. Using citizen science, that is, data collected by laypeople, the opportunities to collect large-scale data on the environment are increasing. Such community-based and citizen scientific approaches can provide useful tools as local people can be trained to accurately take measurements that can be used in scientific studies. However, little is known about how well volunteer-based non-standard subjective assessments of the environment based on prior experience only and no training compare with scientifically measured estimates of that environment. In... (More)
Citizen science is changing society's contribution to research projects worldwide. Non-experts are no longer just spectators, they are active participants and supporters of scientific work. Using citizen science, that is, data collected by laypeople, the opportunities to collect large-scale data on the environment are increasing. Such community-based and citizen scientific approaches can provide useful tools as local people can be trained to accurately take measurements that can be used in scientific studies. However, little is known about how well volunteer-based non-standard subjective assessments of the environment based on prior experience only and no training compare with scientifically measured estimates of that environment. In this paper, we tested how well measures of coastal water quality assessed by local inhabitants corresponds with objective water quality data collected using scientific instruments. Our results showed that over 70% of the respondents assessed water quality in the right direction and almost 60% were correct in their estimates. We found that socio-demographic factors affect the assessments, but do not markedly improve reliability. We conclude that simple questionnaires can be used to assess general coastal water quality.
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- author
- Gunko, Ruslan ; Rapeli, Lauri ; Scheinin, Matias ; Vuorisalo, Timo and Karell, Patrik LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2022
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- in
- Environmental Policy and Governance
- volume
- 32
- issue
- 2
- pages
- 149 - 157
- publisher
- Wiley-Blackwell
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85122142487
- ISSN
- 1756-932X
- DOI
- 10.1002/eet.1975
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- additional info
- Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. Environmental Policy and Governance published by ERP Environment and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
- id
- c541e623-e5a7-45ce-afcf-6ab11b8ab4da
- date added to LUP
- 2022-01-27 08:29:38
- date last changed
- 2022-06-29 18:30:02
@article{c541e623-e5a7-45ce-afcf-6ab11b8ab4da,
abstract = {{<p>Citizen science is changing society's contribution to research projects worldwide. Non-experts are no longer just spectators, they are active participants and supporters of scientific work. Using citizen science, that is, data collected by laypeople, the opportunities to collect large-scale data on the environment are increasing. Such community-based and citizen scientific approaches can provide useful tools as local people can be trained to accurately take measurements that can be used in scientific studies. However, little is known about how well volunteer-based non-standard subjective assessments of the environment based on prior experience only and no training compare with scientifically measured estimates of that environment. In this paper, we tested how well measures of coastal water quality assessed by local inhabitants corresponds with objective water quality data collected using scientific instruments. Our results showed that over 70% of the respondents assessed water quality in the right direction and almost 60% were correct in their estimates. We found that socio-demographic factors affect the assessments, but do not markedly improve reliability. We conclude that simple questionnaires can be used to assess general coastal water quality.</p>}},
author = {{Gunko, Ruslan and Rapeli, Lauri and Scheinin, Matias and Vuorisalo, Timo and Karell, Patrik}},
issn = {{1756-932X}},
language = {{eng}},
number = {{2}},
pages = {{149--157}},
publisher = {{Wiley-Blackwell}},
series = {{Environmental Policy and Governance}},
title = {{How accurate is citizen science? Evaluating public assessments of coastal water quality}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/eet.1975}},
doi = {{10.1002/eet.1975}},
volume = {{32}},
year = {{2022}},
}