By Ever needed to report time spent collecting data? Good news! CitSci now supports built-in time tracking and reporting. Volunteers can log their individual hours, and project leaders can easily report total volunteer time across their projects.
How Time is Collected
When submitting observations, volunteers may be asked to report how long it took, or when they started or ended different activities related to the observations submitted. These activities will vary based on the nature of the activity and may include:
- Observation time – when the individual observation started and ended.
- Travel duration– the amount of time spent traveling before observing or between observations. Examples include driving to a remote site, hiking to the next observation location as part of another activity, or launching a boat to observe aquatic invasive species in a lake.
- Setup duration– the amount of time spent setting up equipment or preparing a site to complete an observation. Examples include setting up a tripod for binoculars or a camera, digging into snow to observe different layers, or pruning plants being tracked for growth.
Project-Level Use of Time Data
Each project may opt in or out of observation time data collection on a datasheet-by-datasheet basis. Project may use this data in their own analysis of their project.
CitSci is implementing this feature to help support projects which were already collecting this information, often through separate surveys.
Projects may also use this data about observation time to:
- Report the total contributions that volunteers have made in the project, which can help them raise funds through grant proposals and/or donor communications.
- Credit the contributions of the most active volunteers.
- Better understand the experience of volunteers within their project.
CitSci does not prescribe how projects use this information. Questions about how time data are used for a specific project should be directed to the project team or addressed by reviewing the instructions provided by that project.
Platform-Level Use of Time Data
At the platform level, CitSci will use this information to better understand participation patterns across projects and to inform platform improvements.
Planned uses include developing estimated completion times for datasheets, similar to estimates provided by other survey platforms.
CitSci is also examining how data collection methods relate to time spent and whether, and to what extent, time per observation changes with repeated participation.
Additional data is also collected with every observation including the data entry time (time spent viewing the new observations form) and device metadata to understand these patterns between mobile and desktop.
Privacy and Access Controls
This information is subject to the same privacy settings and access controls selected by each project on CitSci. Time data collected within private projects will remain private, and time data recorded in private datasheets will not be visible to other project members.
Questions or Feedback
Thank you to the volunteers and project teams who contribute their time and expertise through CitSci. Questions and/or reflections about time tracking, reporting, or project settings can be submitted to the CitSci team using our feedback form.
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