The science might be a bit iffy, but our participants enjoyed themselves!

As passionate practitioners, there can be a tendency to assume that our citizen science projects are an overwhelming success, and often our ‘evaluation’ is limited to counting the numbers of participants, taking... [ view full abstract ]

As passionate practitioners, there can be a tendency to assume that our citizen science projects are an overwhelming success, and often our ‘evaluation’ is limited to counting the numbers of participants, taking photographs and selecting nice quotations sent by happy participants to our funders. Here, I discuss a simple evaluation of a citizen science project which looked at both the quality of the data collected and the impact of participation on knowledge and interest in nature. This revealed a significant increase in knowledge after participation, demonstrating the effectiveness of the survey as an educational tool. However, there were some discrepancies between data collected by the participants and a trained scientist. Recommendations are made for how to improve the quality of the results obtained through citizen science projects and the learning experience for participants. It is hoped that others will be inspired to evaluate their own projects, and I will end by recommending some resources that can help people evaluate their work, and asking the audience to share their own recommendations too.