Galaxy Zoo: Exploring the Motivations of Citizen Science Volunteers

Abstract

The Galaxy Zoo citizen science website invites anyone with an Internet\nconnection to participate in research by classifying galaxies from the Sloan\nDigital Sky Survey. As of April 2009, more than 200,000 volunteers had made\nmore than 100 million galaxy classifications. In this paper, we present results\nof a pilot study into the motivations and demographics of Galaxy Zoo\nvolunteers, and define a technique to determine motivations from free responses\nthat can be used in larger multiple-choice surveys with similar populations.\nOur categories form the basis for a future survey, with the goal of determining\nthe prevalence of each motivation.\n