Citizen science: A new direction in canine behavior research

Researchers increasingly rely on members of the public to contribute to scientific projects—from collecting or identifying, to analyzing and disseminating data. The “citizen science” model proves useful to many thematically distinctive fields, like ornithology, astronomy, and phenology. The recent formalization of citizen science projects addresses technical issues related to volunteer participation—like data quality—so that citizen scientists can make longstanding, meaningful contributions to scientific projects. Since the late 1990s, canine science research has relied with greater…