2009/09/16 by M. Jordan Raddick, Georgia Bracey, Pamela Gay +7 · 2 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · Psychology · #Astronomy #Citizen science #Computer science #Demographics #Demography #Galaxy #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Geography #Physics #Plant and animal studies #Psychology #Sky #Sociology #Species Distribution and Climate Change #The Internet #World Wide Web #astro-ph.GA #astro-ph.IM #physics.pop-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.3847/aer2009036
15 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2009/09/16 · openalex publication_date 2010/02/18 · arxiv updated 2015/05/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The Galaxy Zoo citizen science website invites anyone with an Internet connection to participate in research by classifying galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. As of April 2009, more than 200,000 volunteers had made more than 100 million galaxy classifications. In this paper, we present results of a pilot study into the motivations and demographics of Galaxy Zoo volunteers, and define a technique to determine motivations from free responses that can be used in larger multiple-choice surveys with similar populations. Our categories form the basis for a future survey, with the goal of determining the prevalence of each motivation.