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Evaluating citizen science outreach: A case-study with The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership

Citizen science programs can be powerful drivers of knowledge and scientific understanding and, in recent decades, they have become increasingly popular. Conducting successful research with the aid of citizen scientists often rests on the efficacy of a program’s outreach strategies. Program evaluati...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Schulwitz, Sarah E., Hill, Greg C., Fry, Vanessa, McClure, Christopher J. W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8009395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33784330
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248948
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author Schulwitz, Sarah E.
Hill, Greg C.
Fry, Vanessa
McClure, Christopher J. W.
author_facet Schulwitz, Sarah E.
Hill, Greg C.
Fry, Vanessa
McClure, Christopher J. W.
author_sort Schulwitz, Sarah E.
collection PubMed
description Citizen science programs can be powerful drivers of knowledge and scientific understanding and, in recent decades, they have become increasingly popular. Conducting successful research with the aid of citizen scientists often rests on the efficacy of a program’s outreach strategies. Program evaluation is increasingly recognized as a critical practice for citizen science practitioners to ensure that all efforts, including outreach, contribute to the overall goals of the program. The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership (AKP) is one such citizen science program that relies on outreach to engage participants in effective monitoring of a declining falcon species. Here, we examine whether various communication strategies were associated with desired outreach goals of the AKP. We demonstrate how social media, webcams, discussion boards, and newsletters were associated with perception of learning, agreement with our conservation messaging, and participation in our box monitoring program. Our results thus help us to improve our outreach methodology, suggest areas where other citizen science programs might improve their outreach efforts, and highlight future research priorities.
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spelling pubmed-80093952021-04-07 Evaluating citizen science outreach: A case-study with The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership Schulwitz, Sarah E. Hill, Greg C. Fry, Vanessa McClure, Christopher J. W. PLoS One Research Article Citizen science programs can be powerful drivers of knowledge and scientific understanding and, in recent decades, they have become increasingly popular. Conducting successful research with the aid of citizen scientists often rests on the efficacy of a program’s outreach strategies. Program evaluation is increasingly recognized as a critical practice for citizen science practitioners to ensure that all efforts, including outreach, contribute to the overall goals of the program. The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership (AKP) is one such citizen science program that relies on outreach to engage participants in effective monitoring of a declining falcon species. Here, we examine whether various communication strategies were associated with desired outreach goals of the AKP. We demonstrate how social media, webcams, discussion boards, and newsletters were associated with perception of learning, agreement with our conservation messaging, and participation in our box monitoring program. Our results thus help us to improve our outreach methodology, suggest areas where other citizen science programs might improve their outreach efforts, and highlight future research priorities. Public Library of Science 2021-03-30 /pmc/articles/PMC8009395/ /pubmed/33784330 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248948 Text en © 2021 Schulwitz et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Schulwitz, Sarah E.
Hill, Greg C.
Fry, Vanessa
McClure, Christopher J. W.
Evaluating citizen science outreach: A case-study with The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership
title Evaluating citizen science outreach: A case-study with The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership
title_full Evaluating citizen science outreach: A case-study with The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership
title_fullStr Evaluating citizen science outreach: A case-study with The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership
title_full_unstemmed Evaluating citizen science outreach: A case-study with The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership
title_short Evaluating citizen science outreach: A case-study with The Peregrine Fund’s American Kestrel Partnership
title_sort evaluating citizen science outreach: a case-study with the peregrine fund’s american kestrel partnership
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8009395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33784330
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248948
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