How Do Age and Attitudes Affect the Quality of Data Collected by Young Citizen Scientists in an Ecological Research Project?

Citizen science is increasingly used to collect ecological data. Specifically, participation of school students in authentic research has been suggested as having a multitude of benefits from serving as data collection to providing science education. Nevertheless, the overall quality and quantity of data is concerning for ecologists who are using data for research. In the Helsinki Urban Rat Project, lower- and upper secondary school students (13-19-year-old) collect data on urban rat occurrence using track plates that record rat footprints. I measured the success of school-aged citizen scientists in collecting and submitting data, and I determined the accuracy of the data they submitted by comparing their results to the results from professional researchers. Furthermore, I used additional questionnaire to relate success and accuracy to student attributes, including age, attitudes about biology as a school subject, interest in the environment and disgust sensitivity toward rats. I learned that, in contrast to results from previous studies, age was not a significant variable but rather available support from a teacher and voluntary participation with rewards were associated with higher data quality. Additionally, attitudes played a part in observer quality: higher liking of biology as a school subject was associated with lower accuracy, whereas a higher interest in the environment was associated with higher accuracy. The young citizen scientists provided broadly accurate data, although false-positive observations were comparatively common. The results suggest that the quality and quantity of citizen-generated data are not straightforwardly dependent on the selected target groups. Citizen science activities should be planned by careful consideration of the context as, for example, the organization of the participation strongly shapes the participatory activities.