Citizen Social Lab: A digital platform for human behavior experimentation within a citizen science framework

Is there a role for citizen science in death and dying research?

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought conversations about death and dying to the fore in a way not experienced for generations. This raises questions around perceptions of death and dying; the role of healthcare and the community in care; and the use of digital media for information and support. Public engagement can provoke a two-way conversation between researchers and the public and includes techniques that can engage the community not only with the topic but also in research. This perspective article considers the potential role of citizen science in death and dying research, including considerations around its potential benefits and constraints.

A Scoping Review of Citizen Science Approaches in Chronic Disease Prevention

Background

Citizen science approaches, which involve members of the public as active collaborators in scientific research, are increasingly being recognized for their potential benefits in chronic disease prevention. However, understanding the potential applicability, feasibility and impacts of these approaches is necessary if they are to be more widely used. This study aimed to synthesize research that has applied and evaluated citizen science approaches in chronic disease prevention and identify key questions, gaps, and opportunities to inform future work in this field.

Methods

We searched six databases (Scopus, Medline, Embase, PsycInfo, PubMed, and CINAHL) in January 2022 to identify articles on the use of citizen science in prevention. We extracted and synthesized data on key characteristics of citizen science projects, including topics, aims and level of involvement of citizen scientists, as well as methods and findings of evaluations of these projects.

Results

Eighty-one articles reported on citizen science across a variety of health issues, predominantly physical activity and/or nutrition. Projects primarily aimed to identify problems from the perspective of community members; generate and prioritize solutions; develop, test or evaluate interventions; or build community capacity. Most projects were small-scale, and few were co-produced with policy or practice stakeholders. While around half of projects included an evaluation component, overall, there was a lack of robust, in-depth evaluations of the processes and impacts of citizen science projects.

Conclusions

Citizen science approaches are increasingly being used in chronic disease prevention to identify and prioritize community-focused solutions, mobilize support and advocacy, and empower communities to take action to support their health and wellbeing. However, to realize the potential of this approach more attention needs to be paid to demonstrating the feasibility of using citizen science approaches at scale, and to rigorous evaluation of impacts from using these approaches for the diverse stakeholders involved.

Citizen science at public libraries: Data on librarians and users perceptions of participating in a citizen science project in Catalunya, Spain

As libraries struggle to keep pace with the changing societal landscape, emerging practices such as citizen science (CS) initiatives are being incorporated to reinforce the idea of public libraries as gathering, meeting, and collaboration spaces within the context of shared community and shared learning resources. However, there is little empirical evidence of whether the most open and participatory ways that CS puts forward can converge with and be nurtured by the essence of public libraries. Also, the roles of librarians and users in the 'next generation public library' have been under-developed. As the number of CS initiatives at public libraries grows, so does the need to collect evidence on the impact and the capacity of assimilation of CS practices. The data describes librarians and users' perceptions of participating in a citizen science project. Two hands-on activities for librarians of the Barcelona Network of Public Libraries were implemented. One was a training course for 30 librarians from 24 libraries which allowed them to envisage citizen science implementation in each library. The second activity consisted in the co-creation of a citizen social science project. 40 library users, 7 librarians from 3 different cities, and professional scientists, were involved. The data on librarians and users' perception was collected through participant observation, surveys, and a focus group to identify strengths and challenges of implementing citizen science at public libraries. The data covers librarians and users attitudes towards citizen science, their motivations to participate, their perceived ability to implement a citizen science project (as for librarians) or to contribute to science (as for library users), and the participants intention to keep engaged with citizen science, drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior. Responses to closed-ended survey questions are analyzed at a descriptive level. The qualitative feedback from the focus group and the open-ended survey question on motivations is subjected to a thematic analysis. The data offers interesting insights to identify opportunities and challenges of implementing citizen science at public libraries, contributing to the debate over the public library's mission as local community hub.

Gender-based pairings influence cooperative expectations and behaviours

The study explores the expectations and cooperative behaviours of men and women in a lab-in-the-field experiment by means of citizen science practices in the public space. It specifically examines the influence of gender-based pairings on the decisions to cooperate or defect in a framed and discrete Prisoner's Dilemma game after visual contact. Overall, we found that when gender is considered behavioural differences emerge in expectations of cooperation, cooperative behaviours, and their decision time depending on whom the partner is. Men pairs are the ones with the lowest expectations and cooperation rates. After visual contact women infer men's behaviour with the highest accuracy. Also, women take significantly more time to defect than to cooperate, compared to men. Finally, when the interacting partners have the opposite gender they expect significantly more cooperation and they achieve the best collective outcome. Together, the findings suggest that non verbal signals may influence men and women differently, offering novel interpretations to the context-dependence of gender differences in social decision tasks.