Citizen science project impact on students' motivation, attitude, and self efficacy in their chosen career

Abstract

As a graduate teaching assistant for a calculus based physics two, my students in the past have expressed to me that they don't feel they belong in their major and that they wish they could start research sooner. I designed this study that aimed to increase student motivation, attitude, and self-efficacy in their chosen career, to do so I gauged the impact of student participation in an active citizen science project of their choice. Citizen science is where professional scientists create a research project and volunteers then aid scientists by collecting data, analyzing data, conducting experiments, discovering something new, and helping solve real world problems. To determine this impact a pre and post project survey was administered in a three-week time frame, students also filled out a project report and participated in an optional interview. I used a mean, median, and mode analysis of the Likert data, a Chi-Square test of independence to determine statistical significance of that Likert data, and emerging thematic analysis of the qualitative data. The results show that there is a slight positive impact for the mean of the data there is a 12.5% increase in motivation, an 8.8% increase in attitude, and a 7.5% increase in self-efficacy, but based on the Chi-Square test these impacts are not statistically significant. Based on emerging thematic analysis of the qualitative data the evidence shows no impact in student motivation, attitude, and self-efficacy emphasizing the Chi-Square test showing no statistical significance. Two major themes from the data emerged, that there were no significant changes towards their major, and that the project was interesting and fun, but not completely relevant to their major. Overall based on the three analysis forms I believe there is no significant impact on the students, but there was still an overall positive experience and open students' eyes to different types of research and the citizen science community.