Study: Life experiences as valuable as training when collecting some scientific data

Read the full story from Arizona State University.

Citizen science engages people who don’t identify as researchers in science investigations. Engagement can include everything from helping figure out what questions to ask, to gathering data and contributing to analysis.

Cindi SturtzSreetharan, associate professor at Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change, recently conducted a study with fellow anthropologists that compared observations made by community volunteers and those made by trained research assistants…

The paper, “Citizen Social Scientists’ Observations on Complex Tasks Match Trained Research Assistants’, Suggesting Lived Experiences are Valuable in Data Collection,” is published in Citizen Science: Theory and Practice.