TY - JOUR
T1 - Counting bees: Learning outcomes from participation in the Dutch national bee survey
AU - Ganzevoort, Wessel
AU - van den Born, Riyan J. G.
N1 - Funding Information: The research reported in this paper was conducted as part of the PhD thesis of the first author. We are grateful to our partners in tNB for the opportunity to conduct this evaluation study. We especially wish to thank Nieke Knoben (Naturalis) and Marchien de Ruiter (IVN) for their support in designing and distributing the surveys. We are also grateful to all our respondents for their time and effort. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2021/5/1
Y1 - 2021/5/1
N2 - Citizen science approaches to data collection are growing in popularity, in part because of their potential for achieving both scientific and educational objectives. Evaluating the impacts of participation on citizen scientists is important, yet such evaluations are still relatively rare. In addi-tion, recent literature reviews indicate that existing studies often focus on content learning, make limited use of existing scales, and rarely report null results. This paper reports an evaluation of the demographic profile, motivations and learning outcomes of participants in the Dutch National Bee Survey, a national‐scale citizen science project involving citizens in collecting observational data of wild bees. Using a repeated measures survey study, we assessed the impact of participation on re-spondents’ attitudes and behavioural intentions regarding bees, and their attitudes towards nature, citizenship, and citizen science. Our baseline (N = 373) and follow‐up (N = 208) surveys indicate that our respondents are of a relatively high age and education level, have a pre‐existing affinity with nature, and are strongly motivated by conservation concerns and learning about bees. Assessment of learning outcomes indicated a significant difference between two types of self‐report questions: respondents reported significant gains in knowledge and appreciation of wild bees, yet attitudinal scales indicated no significant shifts in attitudes towards bees, nature, citizen science, or citizenship. In our discussion, we suggest several explanations for this finding, including respondents’ pre‐ex-isting affinity with nature, and advance suggestions for future research into citizen science learning outcomes.
AB - Citizen science approaches to data collection are growing in popularity, in part because of their potential for achieving both scientific and educational objectives. Evaluating the impacts of participation on citizen scientists is important, yet such evaluations are still relatively rare. In addi-tion, recent literature reviews indicate that existing studies often focus on content learning, make limited use of existing scales, and rarely report null results. This paper reports an evaluation of the demographic profile, motivations and learning outcomes of participants in the Dutch National Bee Survey, a national‐scale citizen science project involving citizens in collecting observational data of wild bees. Using a repeated measures survey study, we assessed the impact of participation on re-spondents’ attitudes and behavioural intentions regarding bees, and their attitudes towards nature, citizenship, and citizen science. Our baseline (N = 373) and follow‐up (N = 208) surveys indicate that our respondents are of a relatively high age and education level, have a pre‐existing affinity with nature, and are strongly motivated by conservation concerns and learning about bees. Assessment of learning outcomes indicated a significant difference between two types of self‐report questions: respondents reported significant gains in knowledge and appreciation of wild bees, yet attitudinal scales indicated no significant shifts in attitudes towards bees, nature, citizen science, or citizenship. In our discussion, we suggest several explanations for this finding, including respondents’ pre‐ex-isting affinity with nature, and advance suggestions for future research into citizen science learning outcomes.
KW - Citizen science
KW - Citizenship
KW - Connection to nature
KW - Evaluation
KW - Moti-vations
KW - Nature relatedness
KW - Survey
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105420107&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.3390/su13094703
DO - https://doi.org/10.3390/su13094703
M3 - Article
SN - 2071-1050
VL - 13
JO - Sustainability
JF - Sustainability
IS - 9
M1 - 4703
ER -