Citizen Science: Evaluating for Civic Engagement

Citizen science programs directly engage the public in collecting data for science-related projects. This paper will investigate the claim that citizen science programs deliver opportunities and outcomes for a specific kind of benefit, “civic engagement.” The paper will identify specific behaviors and conditions that have been used as indicators of citizen engagement in citizen science and discuss probable theoretical bases. Second, the paper will report on progress of an empirical study (a program evaluation) conducted in spring of 2016 of the Iowater Program, a citizen science program managed by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which has trained over 5,000 citizens in water monitoring and reporting. The Iowater evaluation will ground the discussion of citizen science in contemporary experiences of the public