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Using Museum Guests as Crowdsourced Participants in Human Subject Research
Author(s) -
Nuessle Tiffany M.,
McNamara Patricia A.,
Garneau Nicole L.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
curator: the museum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.312
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 2151-6952
pISSN - 0011-3069
DOI - 10.1111/cura.12371
Subject(s) - crowdsourcing , taste , resource (disambiguation) , subject (documents) , psychology , sociology , library science , computer science , world wide web , computer network , neuroscience
The Genetics of Taste Lab is a community‐based lab studying human genetics at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. From 2009–2019, nearly 10,000 Museum guests have had the opportunity to become crowdsourced participants contributing phenotypic and genetic data to the lab’s taste and genetics research studies. This case study, presenting evaluation data collected during a Baseline study and during our Savory & Sour Study shows that museum guests both enjoy and value participating in authentic genetics research. By contributing quality data to advance scientists’ understanding of the genetics of taste, they are also learning specific details about the study topics and how those relate to their own lives. Highlighting the above case study and drawing upon our other studies as needed, we hope that our experience—both our successes and challenges—will be a resource for other institutions interested in implementing a crowdsourcing research model in human health.