Choosing a question

How to choose a question

In the last step, we looked at the empathy timeline as a way to think about an environmental issue differently. Now, suppose that you have an environmental issue that directly concerns you or your community, and you want to do something about it. In this step, we will discuss how to delve into the issue and how to frame this into questions that can help to create a citizen science project.

First, think about the types of issues that can be addressed by a citizens observatory. These issues should be a worry  to your community, of course, but you also need to be able to observe and measure them. You could use low-cost sensors, mobile phones, satellite imagery or visual observation, for example. Look for a way to understand the current status of a problem and to monitor how the issue changes over time. 

Second, you need to know about the environmental policies, laws or regulations that apply to your issue. For example, can you show through your sensing activities that some health limits have been exceeded in your area? Only by providing evidence of the problem (e.g. air pollution), can you effect change, for example, by involving your local authorities or raising awareness in your local community to change behaviour. 

Finally, you need an issue that sparks action and would encourage a community to act. Keep in mind that a community does not always mean acting only locally – a community can also be national or even global. Similar environmental issues affect many people around the world.

Let's take air pollution as an example.

Is it an issue where you are?

First, this would need to be an issue in your area. Maybe you experience health issues yourself or have been talking to neighbours who take their children to school along congested streets. 

Why does the problem exist?

Then, you need to understand what the potential sources of pollution could be and what these pollutants are. For example, is it NO2 from cars or particulate matter from nearby industry? 

How can it be measured?

Then, you need to measure the levels of pollution using sensors. In the case of air quality, there is a wide range of possible measurement tools that range from cheap and low-tech, to more expensive and higher-tech. You will want to consider budget, ease of use and accuracy when selecting your sensors.

What are the current policies?

At the same time, you need to look at the safe pollution limits set by countries, regions (such as the EU) and organizations like the World Health Organization. 

What’s the question?

Finally, you can ask the question: does the air pollution in my local area exceed safe limits? If so, you can explore what days, and times air quality is worse or better to identify any trends.  Even if limits are observed, is there a critical mass of interest to improve the current levels of air quality? 

In the next step, we will look at the questions being addressed by other citizen observatories and find out why they were chosen. 

Questions from the observatories

Campaign design best practices

In the last step, you saw some examples of research questions selected by different citizen observatories. Now, let’s find out how you can design your own project once you have identified a relevant question.

There are several aspects you need to think about when designing a project. We’ll be coming back to these a lot during the course, so don’t worry if you do not have all the answers now. Think of this as a helpful checklist that you can fill in as your ideas develop:

Who is your main audience?

Is your project open to anyone or are you targeting a specific group of people, such as students in schools, a bird-watching community or a local pollution action group? Knowing this group will help to think about how you advertise your project and how you will communicate with your participants (see the next question!).

How will you communicate with participants during the project?

What form of communication will you use with participants? For example, you could use email, text messages, social media, newsletters, face-to-face meetings or a dedicated platform for communication. Some citizen science projects have a dedicated platform, such as Zooniverse. Near real-time visualisations of the data, such as showing data on a map, can be a great way to communicate progress during a project to show collective progress; sharing the data back can also provide a sense of ownership.

How long will your campaign run for?

You need to decide if yours is a:

• one-off event taking place over a single day or a weekend
• a longer-term campaign that may run for weeks or months
• a continuous campaign that has no fixed end date
• or a series of small campaigns that take place over time

This decision is related to the question that you are asking and how to measure it: do you want to establish only the current status of an issue or to monitor changes over time?

What is the geographical scope of your campaign?

Your campaign may be focused locally, or you might want to collect data globally. You’ll need to decide the geographical boundaries of your project so that you can advertise it appropriately and then reach the right audience. 

Is the project online or field-based?

Projects can run from your desktop in a web browser, like armchair mapping of buildings and streets for Humanitarian OpenStreetMap after a big event like a hurricane, or classifying objects in one of the many Zooniverse citizen science projects. Or, you might send people out into the field to make observations. This all depends on the type of data that you need to collect. 

What is required of participants?

What is it that you want participants to do? You need to outline the tasks clearly and, if required, provide protocols for data collection to make sure that the data are comparable in quality to those collected by scientists. For example, if measuring air quality, all participants should be using calibrated sensors that measure the same indicators with the same accuracy. Do participants need any equipment for the task, and who will supply it? Or, is there a DIY element to the task that requires some personal funding by the participants (e.g. an attachment or app for their phones)? If the task is difficult, will it require training? Is there an introductory event that they will need to attend to take part?

What are the incentives for participation?

Although we will discuss engaging participants later in the course, you need to think about what motivates your participants and why they would want to participate in the project. 

Image credits for this page

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