What kind of work do new volunteers on a online citizen science project do?

What is it about?

We examined the activity of new users to the Planet Hunters citizen science project (hosted on Zooniverse) to see what different patterns emerged. In this project, volunteers annotate light curves from stars to indicate the possible existance of planets orbiting the stars. A qualitative study was done by interviewing and through focus groups with new volunteers to explore how they learned to do the citizen science task and interacted with other volunteers. This study showed that volunteers have different backgrounds, modes of participation and levels of engagement with the social spaces in the project, which lead to different patterns of activity, A quantitative study was done by analyzing the trace of activity of 1,687 new volunteers. The activities were aggregated to sessions, defined as a sequence of activities separated by no more than 30 minutes; a gap of more than 30 minutes defines a new session. Sessions were then clustered using k-means to identify six sets of similar sessions. By far the majority of sessions (2690) are what we called Light Work, dominated by doing a few annotations. The second biggest cluster (140) we called Deep Viewing & Working, in which volunteers did some of everything: a large number of annotations coupled with views of other resources. The third cluster (109) we called Careful Annotation, in which volunteers did a small number of annotations, spending more time on each, with some views and contributions to other resources. The other clusters include Intense Viewing & Contributing, Talking & Annotating and Star Specializers. Many volunteers did only one light work session, indicating that they were trying out the project but deciding not to continue. Those who continued fell into three groups: Casual Workers, who did only Light Work sessions; Community Workers (8 total), who posted many comments; and Focused Workers, who oscillate between Light Work and other kinds of sessions with contributions beyond annotation.

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Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash

Photo by David Menidrey on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The paper helps to elucidate the different ways that newcomers participate in citizen science. Much of the focus is on the science work (in this case, the annotations), but we find that other contributions are valuable. Specifically, those who contribute to the discussion of the light curves provide a useful resource for many others who use those discussions to guide their own work. Volunteers have different levels of interest and ability, which should be taken into account in designing projects, rather than assuming one mode of contribution.