Animal Welfare Professionals

Hi! I'm a grad student at the University of Washington and a volunteer at a TNR/low-income cat sterilization clinic in Seattle. The only familiar face I'm noticing is @JohnDBoone, but I may have interacted with some of you at the HSUS Expo. You may have also participated in one of the three national surveys I've run for feral/free-roaming cat advocates.

My Master's project is validating Kitizen Science, a citizen science program I'm developing to monitor cat populations and conduct impact assessments for feline spay/neuter organizations to see if their efforts are reducing the size of free-roaming cat populations in their target areas. The first of three validation studies is currently underway with the aim of learning the error rate of humans identifying individual cats from photos taken with a smart phone. Feel free to visit the website, learn more about why Kitizen Science is needed and the research methods I'm using, and participate in the first online validation study if you have the time. Also, if you'd be interesting in being one of the first study sites (starting in 2021), drop me an email at kitizenscience@gmail.com. Nice to meet you!

#CommunityCatManagement

In case you haven't connected, you may also want to check out the DC Cat Count at http://www.dccatcount.org/. Thank you for sharing about your project.

#CommunityCatManagement

Yes, very much aware!  Getting to know the DCCC project lead, John Boone, years before it started was something that helped change my personal trajectory towards population biology research.  He's done lots of cool projects with street animals around the world, and we need more people with the training to properly study free-roaming dog and cat populations.

#CommunityCatManagement

Thanks for sharing! I completed the first validation survey, looking forward to learning more about your project 

#CommunityCatManagement

Thanks!  When you say you completed the survey, do you mean the new volunteer survey with some questions about yourself?  If you keep going after that, there are instructions for the validation study, and then you'll be presented with a photo matching trial for the photo identification study running currently.  No biggies if you haven't had the time to do a photo matching trial, but I wanted to let you know there's stuff beyond the new volunteer survey.

#CommunityCatManagement

Yes! I did complete the first validation study with the photo identification. As participants, will we be able to see our "scores" on the trials we complete? Just curious to know if I properly identified the cat in my trial 

#CommunityCatManagement

I will be able to give you your total score once the study is done.  I probably won't have time to do the analysis on this until January, but you will receive an email about the study in the winter.

#CommunityCatManagement

Love this project! I'm signing up for the online validation study now. Sounds like fun!

For anyone having trouble finding the Kitizen Science website, it's hyperlinked in the original post. Just put your cursor over Kitizen Science. It's also here:  https://www.kitizenscience.org/ 

(Side note:  When you click on a post title and open the thread page, you'll see hyperlinks in teal. We've asked our developers to show them the same way on the home page so we should see that change in the next month or so.)

#CommunityCatManagement

Thanks!  Apologies if I didn't add a link correctly, I'm new to this forum.

#CommunityCatManagement

No need to apologize. You did everything right! Your post just brought to light the need for our developers to make some changes to make it easier to see links on the home page. 

I've done a couple of the photo matching trials. They're really fun! Thanks so much for sharing this in the forum. Hope you get a lot of participants!

#CommunityCatManagement

Thanks!  It's been going well so far. 

As an aside, of the many goals I have with Kitizen Science is creating a way for people who can't otherwise volunteer in shelters/clinics/fostering to participate in a project benefitting cat welfare.  While normal hands-on volunteering is important and meaningful (which is why I do it myself), I'm hoping to tap into a market of people who are mobility-limited, have personal constraints, or who otherwise might not choose to volunteer with hands-on animal volunteer work.

#CommunityCatManagement

Thanks to everyone who shared or participated in the first validation study for Kitizen Science! Regarding the goal of establishing that cat lovers are pretty good at matching and identifying cats online using photos taken with smart phones, volunteers did better than I expected. (Once this study is published in an academic journal, it will also be useful to cite for any other groups doing cat monitoring projects using smart phone photos.)

The second validation study, a test run of the online portion of the program, will start in January.

#CommunityCatManagement

For anyone who participated in this fun Kitizen Science project, Faunalytics  posted a blog "Do Cat Advocates Make Good Citizen Scientists?" on 1/11/24 about the results from this study. It's fascinating! Here's a link to the Research Paper with full results: https://theoryandpractice.citizenscienceassociation.org/articles/10.5334/cstp.465 

Thanks for sharing this in the forum, Sabrina!

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Kim Domerofski (she/her)
Community Manager
Maddie's Fund
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