Research findings:

Involvement: Most youth participants had not previously been involved in citizen science-based activities (n=11; 69%); before the workshop, “I did not know it [citizen science] was a thing”. Of those who had previously been involved in citizen science, activities included beach clean-ups (with UniSC), species counts (with UniSC), TurtleCare, CoastSnap, Reef Check Aus, and online through Zooniverse.

Participating youth were either planning to be involved in citizen science following participation in the workshop with 62.5% (n=10) unsure of how to do this while, 37.5% (n=6) were planning to get involved via Zooniverse, searching for citizen science on the Sunshine Coast Region, university studies and facilitating citizen science activities as a researcher and continuing to participate as a volunteer.

Areas of Interest: The areas are of interest to participating youth included participating in important research and giving a new perspective, astronomy, animals, social justice, “understanding more about light pollution”, “bringing people together and informing them about the world that they live in”, “empowering others to become fascinated by weird and wonderful things they wouldn’t have previously thought of”, turtles, aliens, space, conservation.

Barriers: The main barriers to youth engagement in citizen science focused on lack of time, competing commitments, inability of youth to “pay attention for long period(s) of time”, preference for shorter (length of time) commitment time, lack of motivation, life stress such as rising costs and mental illness, not knowing where to start, accessibility and knowledge of existence issues, little advertising or promotion of CS projects and the perception that “science is boring”.

Suggestions for engaging youth: Participating youth offered these recommendations for engaging youth in citizen science:

• being made more aware of information nights like this

• making activities hands on and engaging

• offer a certificate so that youth can add it to resume or scholarship applications

• being rewarded

• being encouraged by peers

• seeing a difference being made and how it impacts our everyday life

• more workshops like this one

• make projects more accessible

• more advertisement

• being educated on the existence of citizen science via promotion on social media e.g., TikTok and Instagram

• encouraging schools

• make Citizen Science 'sexy', appealing, fun, exciting and new

• gamify Citizen Science to engage broader audiences in diverse backgrounds

Importance of sustainability: Almost 2/3 (62.5%) of participating youth stated that all three dimensions of sustainability must be in focus. In terms of addressing sustainability, participating youth believed citizen science projects must accomplish the following:

• create more awareness

• improving the environment and world we live in

• education in and outside of workshops through hands-on activities

• be accessible to everyone and include the collection of data

• connect people to place, each other, and themselves

• create a Custodianship feeling amongst people, making them feel responsible for their environment

• inform youth of the issues faced in today’s society by covering all forms of sustainability

• increase the knowledge of the general public

Motivation and Satisfaction: The main motivation for attending the citizen science workshop at UniSC was to spend time with family/friends followed by curiosity and to learn about astronomy. The workshops were deemed to be engaging, interesting, enjoyable, offered learning about astronomy, sustained participant interest and participants felt they had learned something new about astronomy. 

Two youth research team members were part of this project.