Open Science (Our Working Definition) A movement to make the scientific processes and practices, research methodology and output, more open and transparent. Open Science aims for each of the stages of scientific research to be more inclusive to other scientists. Open Science provides the public with greater accessibility to learn about and participate in scientific processes and research. Citizen Science and open data communication can be key aspects of the Data Collection/Analysis phase of research. Adapted from the Open Science page, https://science.gc.ca/site/science/en/open-science

Citizen Science (Our Working Definition) A collaboration between volunteers and scientists to produce authentic research that would be difficult/expensive/time-consuming to collect without greater public involvement from the population. Adapted from the Citizen Science Portal, https://science.gc.ca/site/science/en/citizen-science-portal

What implicit associations do you have about gender when presented with images of Space Discovery and Technology?

How can NASA/CSA Open Data positively change these implicit associations?

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) was created by Harvard’s Project Implicit in 1998 to uncover biases using associations. We have adapted an Open Source IAT (Universiteit Gent, Oct 2022 modification) using Python to identify the association between Space (Discovery/Technology) and Gender (Male/Female Astronauts). The IAT has been widely researched to identify common biases, including gender and STEM careers and this expands upon this research. Emily Chung (CBC, 2019) notes that gender bias in STEM in Canada is widespread, with over half of Canadians unable to name even a single female scientist.

Beattie and McGuire in the Environment and Behaviour journal (June 2020 issue) shows that strong emotional video clips could influence viewer’s attitudes towards positively decreasing their carbon footprint. Our idea was to combine these two psychological research areas by inviting the public to participate in this Citizen Science project. Our Project is an attempt to explicitly change implicit attitudes around space and gender, all while contributing to Open Science. The overall goal of this project is to support the broad movement toward openness and inclusivity with NASA/CSA.

Our IAT presents 10 images of space discovery (taken from RADARSAT, JWST, and Hubble), space technology, as well as 10 male and 10 female astronauts (all taken from CSA Multimedia and NASA images). Using the conventions of the IAT, once the individuals complete the 7 blocks of the test, the IAT will determine the level of the individual’s bias. The IAT uses the labels “slight”, “moderate”, and “strong” to categorize the biases based on the time taken in different phases of the IAT (responses to the different pairings). The user reviews their feedback and then can choose to watch a 30 s video chosen to highlight Women in NASA/CSA (This could be easily replaced with other choices from NASA/CSA Multimedia/Interactives and measured for their effectiveness). They then repeat phases 3-7 of the IAT and note change in their score.

This could allow citizens to participate in science by using repeated opportunities and giving feedback to progress should they want to track their repeated results. Having individuals experience and identify their own biases and being able to do so regularly and repeatedly is reproducibility. Whether these short-term effects translate into long-term stability is unknown, but this would allow individuals to track their own progress and continue to add to the larger dataset. Our overall Project data then can also be compared to other IAT data collected over time, using Project Implicit’s Open Source Data. This Open Science project can also show larger population biases, while determining which NASA/CSA Open Data initiatives could be more effective at changing attitudes. Additionally, NASA/CSA could adapt this approach to consider additional areas of their Open Data (attitudes about climate change, scientific progress, space expenditures).

2023 NASA Space Apps Challenge

AstroNuts