Not Empty Rain Gauges: Experienced Hobbyists Fulfilled in a Contributory Project

For the past two decades, conceptual frameworks from informal science learning have guided the field of citizen science, sometimes leading to assumptions or expectations that participants enter projects without prior knowledge and their engagement produces measurable gains in knowledge or attitude changes. Accordingly, projects with high retention are hypothesized to be those with high learning outcomes. We obtained almost 300 testimonials from the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network (CoCoRaHS) in which participants reflected on their experiences in the project. We used the Dimensions of Engagement framework to conduct a deductive content analysis to identify the affective, cognitive, behavioral, motivational, and social aspects of engaging in CoCoRaHS. We found that many participants were lifelong learners, with 74% of testimonials mentioning a lifelong interest in weather, and 46% mentioning pre-existing knowledge and experiences with weather before joining CoCoRaHS. Given their prior interest, knowledge, and experience, participants mentioned multiple motivations for engaging in CoCoRaHS, such as interest (74%), weather (68%), enjoyment (61%), and contributing to forecasts (54%), with many specifically said CoCoRaHS gave them a sense of purpose to their weather-based hobby. Approximately 21% of participants used CoCoRaHS data to make decisions, particularly farmers and gardeners. Slightly less than 20% specified gaining new knowledge or skills. These findings challenge the common, deficit-based assumption in previous citizen science research that learning is the result of participation. For hobby-based citizen science projects, recreation frameworks such as serious leisure might produce insights overlooked with informal science learning frameworks.