Summative Evaluation for the YardMap Network

The purpose of the summative evaluation is to two-fold: 1) provide documentation to NSF about the extent to which the project met its goals and objectives, and 2) give the Lab of Ornithology information about how well the Web application and the ecosystem within which it resides is engaging the intended audiences. The main evaluation questions the study needed to answer related to who is participating in YardMap, how much participation affects participants’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviors around birding, gardening, and citizen science.
A true experimental design was used, where individuals signing up for the YardMap were randomly assigned to either a Treatment or a Control condition. People in the Control condition were required to not visit the YardMap site until after the research period was over and thus this condition constituted a “waitlist control.” There were two Treatment conditions, one where the social networking features were active and another where the social networking features were not present. This was intended to allow the evaluators to explore not only what the outcomes were for participating in YardMap, but also the extent to which having social networking functions available impacted these outcomes. As such, the design was dependent upon having an active social network within the timeframe of the study.