Citizen Science Motivations as Discovered with CosmoQuest

摘要

CosmoQuest is a citizen science portal that has launched several projects that allow users to participate in mapping and discovery missions throughout the solar system. We are particularly interested in how citizen scientists move through the site and interact with the various tasks. We have piloted a survey asking citizen scientists for their motivations for using CosmoQuest and link that with their site behaviors. This is part of a larger project using online and real-life interactions to study citizen scientist behaviors, motivations, and learning with a goal of building a better community with researchers, volunteers, educators, and developers. Such research is important to understanding how to engage new and returning citizen scientists across a wide spectrum of projects.