Strategies Employed by Citizen Science Programs to Increase the Credibility of Their Data

The success of citizen science in producing important and unique data is attracting interest from scientists and resource managers. Nonetheless, questions remain about the credibility of citizen science data. Citizen science programs desire to meet the same standards of credibility as academic science, but they usually work within a different context, for example, training and managing significant numbers of volunteers with limited resources. We surveyed the credibility-building strategies of 30 citizen science programs that monitor environmental aspects of the California coast. We identified a total of twelve strategies: Three that are applied during training and planning; four that are applied during data collection; and five that are applied during data analysis and program evaluation. Variation in the application of these strategies by program is related to factors such as the number of participants, the focus on group or individual work, and the time commitment required of volunteers. The structure of each program and available resources require program designers to navigate tradeoffs in the choices of their credibility strategies. Our results illustrate those tradeoffs and provide a framework for the necessary discussions between citizen science programs and potential users of their data—including scientists and decision makers—about shared expectations for credibility and practical approaches for meeting those expectations.