An Evaluation of a Parent-Led Citizen Science Project

Many co-created citizen science projects are conceived by researchers, but Parenting Science Gang, which explored questions participants had about parenting, was entirely parent-led. Herein, we evaluate the success of the project, reporting on results from a pre- and post-survey, exploring the project’s impact on participants in terms of their knowledge, confidence, and science capital. None of the main project team worked as scientists, and most participants feeling that it was parent-led. Some participants found the project confusing, despite extensive facilitation, emphasising the importance of clear “signposting” at each stage of the research process and acknowledgement of the messy nature of co-created research. Whilst for most of our metrics we were not able to statistically demonstrate change (for example, in science capital), the free-text comments in the surveys show real impact on some participants in terms of their interest in science and feeling that they can contribute to science. The free-text comments give rich information about the changes in participants, and as such, demonstrate the value of using open questions in pre- and post-surveys, as these can allow unexpected outcomes and subtle changes to be captured that would otherwise be missed through quantitative analysis alone.