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2015 Autumn | Education & Outreach

Improving Citizen Science: Methods for Enhancing the Utility, Relevancy, and Accuracy of Volunteer-Collected Data

Student(s):

Samantha Herman

Program or Department(s):

  • Program on the Environment
  • University of Washington

Site supervisor(s):

Nicole Ivey

Partner(s):

  • Seattle Aquarium

Faculty advisor(s):

Kate Litle, Washington Sea Grant, College of the Environment

During my project, I analyzed a citizen science dataset, which was comprised of eight years of data collected by high school students as part of the Seattle Aquarium’s Citizen Science program. I also performed a literature review of contemporary citizen science topics that allowed me to develop recommendations the Seattle Aquarium could implement into their citizen science program, without altering their existing protocol. I was interested in studying how the accuracy of volunteer-collected data could be improved in order to make the data a reliable and useful tool for future policy and natural resource management decisions.