John Taylor, Professor of Economics at Stanford University and developer of the "Taylor Rule" for setting interest rates | Stanford University
John Taylor, Professor of Economics at Stanford University and developer of the "Taylor Rule" for setting interest rates | Stanford University
Scientific research extends beyond laboratory work, enabling anyone with an interest in community improvement to become a citizen scientist. Citizen science leverages crowdsourced knowledge, often involving community data-gathering for researchers' interpretation and use. Stanford’s Our Voice citizen science initiative refers to this as citizen science “for” or “with” the people.
In contrast, their work on health equity enables citizen science “by the people,” engaging community members in data collection, analysis, and use of their findings. The Our Voice method emphasizes collaboration with community-engaged researchers and organizations to support residents in becoming agents of local change.
The team has found that their approach elicits critical local wisdom not accessible through traditional methods. Data from citizen science projects can also be leveraged by the community to inform relevant and sustainable changes.
Here are tips from Our Voice for engaging with and understanding citizen science:
1. Anyone can be a citizen scientist
Every person has valuable lived experiences that can inform research, educate others, and drive meaningful change. Observations from daily activities can help identify high-priority concerns for improvement.
2. No observation is too small
Citizen scientists should capture more data than they think necessary. Sharing findings with other residents often results in greater insights through group discussions and collective analysis.
3. It’s a win-win for individuals and communities
Citizen scientists gain new knowledge about their communities, ways to activate change, and connections they can carry into the future. Projects have led to increased community cohesion, policy-level changes, and individual feelings of agency.
4. Citizen science can contribute to better health care
Citizen science helps communities pinpoint important issues and identify stakeholders for positive change. For example, Holly Tabor's project at Stanford Medicine involved adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) collecting data on healthcare experiences.
5. Consider how involved you’d like to be
Our Voice emphasizes letting the community take the lead in projects across more than 25 countries. This approach allows tailoring methods to different cultural contexts for effective change.
6. Citizen science works
Our Voice’s method has received recognition at various levels and several major grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The team continues exploring new ways of visualizing data alongside traditional big data sets.
The information above is provided by Our Voice members Jasmine Nevarez, Zakaria Doueiri, Ann Banchoff, Ines Campero, Abby King, and student interns.
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