Guidelines for Diverse Citizen Science Recruitment

EU Horizon2020 research and innovation project, CSI-COP: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/873169

The CSI-COP project will engage citizen scientists to investigate GDPR compliance through exploring cookies in websites and in apps. This document is the second of two deliverables in CSI-COP project work package 2 (WP2) that investigate the best practices that have been used Europe-wide and in international citizen science projects. The previous deliverable D2.1 conducted an exhaustive exploration of literature in order to find the best practices and the most efficient methods in citizen science engagement (CSI-COP, 2020). In the present deliverable D2.2 we explore the means that have been adopted to achieve balanced and diverse participation in citizen science, taking into consideration gender, socio-economic and geographic factors.

To this end, we covered three main factors affecting inclusive citizen science projects, and we present our findings in this report. First, we review a large number of citizen science projects regarding the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of their participants and we draw conclusions about the typical characteristics of those involved in such activities. Secondly, we describe in detail the digital divide phenomenon and its effects on the social participation of different individuals and groups. Finally, we present the diversity factors that influence participation in citizen science projects and explain the identified methods to access different target audiences.