Abstract
Background:
Within the conservation social sciences, the metaphor of pathologies offers a perspective for examining the factors that contribute to the success and failure of biodiversity conservation initiatives. This article explores lessons from community engagement and engagement design within citizen and community science projects and programs. The goal is to learn from these contexts so as to better understand the pathology of ineffective engagement within the broader field of conservation science and practice.
Methods:
Findings stem from semi-structured interviews with 16 project and program staff and coordinators representing 11 citizens and community science programs. Projects and programs were selected for their focus on biodiversity conservation. Staff and coordinators were recruited because they had direct experience working with volunteers. Interviews were thematically analyzed followed by Charmaz’s grounded theory approach.
Results:
Findings relate to two themes. The first theme explores staff and coordinators’ intentions and strategies to promote codesign and coproduction with the community. These efforts stem from a goal to ensure volunteers have a meaningful experience beyond tasks specific to data collection. The second theme links meaningful experiences to structural, particularly demographic, challenges related to volunteer recruitment and retention. Staff and coordinators report partnerships with postsecondary institutions as a desired strategy to overcome recruitment and retention issues.
Discussion and Conclusion:
Discussion of findings adds context from the scholarship on university–community partnerships. While acknowledging the many potential benefits of partnership, the article explores potential issues related to structural differences in power and possibly incongruent cultures of knowledge production.
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