Skip to main content

I want to measure the impacts of citizen science 

Why is it relevant?

You can measure the impacts of your citizen science initiative in a variety of ways. The landscape of approaches ranges from a standardised approach that covers all aspects of a citizen science initiatives, to guidance for writing an ‘impact stories’ about a specific change that a citizen science project has triggered. All impact assessment approaches differ fundamentally in their purpose, resources required for applying them and the extent to which these can be used for ‘self-assessment’ by citizen science projects – you should therefore consider which is best suited to your circumstances. It is therefore essential that you are awaree which approaches are available, and in which situations they are most applicable.

How can this be done?

MICS has employed four main approaches for measuring the impact of citizen science:  

A standardised approach for measuring the impacts of citizen science

A comprehensive (scaled) set of Impact indicators to capture evolving impacts of CS initiatives on the MICS platform over time.

Focusing on a tailored selection of indicators

Selection from available impact indicators in the MICS Impact Indicator Explorer. 

Co-evaluating the impacts of citizen science via impact journeys

Identify cause-and-effect relationships between a citizen science initiative and its impacts, with input from stakeholders

Creating impact stories about citizen science

Capture a distinct change of a CS initiative and present it as a story. Multiple stories per citizen science initiative are possible

The standardised approach provided on the MICS Platform offers you a relatively fast and straightforward impact assessment approach, that is applicable to a wide range of citizen science initiatives. It also allows you to compare impact across citizen science projects, enabling a greater understanding of factors influencing impact. 

Alternatively, using the MICS Impact Indicator Explorer, specific indicators can be selected and monitored in order to obtain an in-depth understanding of certain impacts. Using this approach, you can tailor your impact assessment to your needs and use state-of-the-art approaches to measure the impacts most important to you. 

A third approach is to co-valuate citizen science, using the MICS Impact Journey Approach. You can include the perspectives of stakeholders involved in the project to identify their priorities, and determine key cause-and-effect relationships between the initiative and its impacts. 

Finally, impact stories offer a method to highlight key policy and governance impacts of a project. This approach, developed by the WeObserve Project, allows you to create an accessible, engaging narrative, with which to target policy makers or funders.