Piloting Zooniverse for food, health and sustainability citizen science

在食品和营养研究者群体与普通大众之间存在着食品知识脱节。同样，政策制定者有关于食物的详细信息，但无法轻易衡量公民对食物的理解或认识，或者这两个知识基础之间的脱节有多大。这种信息脱节影响到如何处理食品安全和健康教育等广泛的食品相关问题，以及如何就环境可持续性、动物福利和人权等复杂问题进行沟通。STFC资助的Zooniverse平台是一种行之有效的方法，可以让公民参与复杂的科学问题。最近的STFC食品网络+合作范围界定项目“试点Zooniverse以帮助我们了解公民食品感知”（2018年）表明，Zooniverse公民科学平台可以成为衡量公民对食品信息感知的解决方案（也可以作为与公民告知和讨论食品信息的一种方式）。由于这一试点，政府部门（FSA和DEFRA）现在有兴趣与一个多学科研究团队合作，共同开发一个面向公众的公民科学试点项目，使用Zooniverse。之前的试点测试了Zooniverse界面，并完善了与食品相关问题的公民科学方法。它依赖于参与者的一小部分私人样本，就10种食物类型和2个变量（温室气体排放和能量密度）提出问题。在开展大规模的公民科学运动之前，需要进行一个额外的试验阶段，以进一步完善方法。该试点项目将在3个月的运营期内面向公众，参与并教育至少400多名英国公民。它将扩展先前的研究，测量公民对30多种食品的可持续性（包括地理和技术相关影响）和健康等主题的看法；粮食系统的风险和信任；饮食习惯（如购物、烹饪、准备和储存）；动物福利和人权。此外，该试点将为Zooniverse提供方法论上的好处，因为它将1)将Zooniverse与传统的调查方法进行比较。2)测量参与市民在3个月期间的行为和饮食变化。这两个因素以前没有被测量过，它们将使更大的研究界受益。

There is a food knowledge disconnect between food and nutrition researcher community, and general population. Likewise, policy makers have detailed information about food, but cannot measure easily what citizens understand or perceive to know about food, or how large the disconnect is between these two knowledge bases. This information disconnect has implications for how to address a wide range of food related subjects from food safety, and health education, as well as how to communicate complex issues ranging from environmental sustainability, and animal welfare and human rights.The STFC funded Zooniverse platform is a proven method of engaging citizens with complex scientific issues. A recent STFC food network + Collaborative Scoping Project "Piloting Zooniverse to help us understand citizen food perceptions" (2018) has shown that the Zooniverse citizen science platform can be a solution to the measurement of citizens perception of food information (and might also act as a way to inform and discuss food information with citizens). As a result of this pilot government departments (FSA and DEFRA) are now interested in working with a multidisciplinary research team to co-develop a publicly facing citizen science pilot using Zooniverse.The previous pilot tested the Zooniverse interface, and refined the citizen science methodology for food related questions. It relied on a small private sample of participants, asking questions on 10 food types and 2 variables (greenhouse gas emissions and energy density). Before a large citizen science campaign can take place, an additional phase of piloting to further refine the methodology needs to occur.This pilot will be publicly facing, engaging and educating a minimum of 400+ UK citizens over 3 month operational period. It will extend the prior research, measuring citizen perceptions of 30+ foods on topics of sustainability (including geographically and technology associated impacts) and healthiness; risk and trust in the food system; food habits (such as shopping cooking, preparation and storage); and animal welfare and human rights. In addition, this pilot will provide methodological benefits for Zooniverse as it will 1) Compare Zooniverse to traditional survey methods. 2) Measure behaviour and dietary change of engaged citizens over the 3 month period. These two factors have not been measured previously and will benefit the larger research community.