Parenting Science Gang is a citizen science project run by parents who want to find scientific answers to questions about parenting. It is funded by the Wellcome Trust.
What do you mean, ‘Citizen Science project’?
Citizen science loosely means that non-scientists are involved in ‘doing some science’. Usually this means that volunteers help collect data, or interpret it (e.g. The Big Garden Birdwatch, Galaxy Zoo, or fold.it), in experiments that professional scientists have chosen and designed. These projects are great, as far as they go, but it’s still scientists in the driving seat and members of the public are just helping them achieve their goals.
Parenting Science Gang goes a step further. Members of the Gang come up with the questions they want to answer, they work out how they might answer those questions and design their own experiments. And then they do the experiments. All of those stages are part of doing science.
Our Gang will get advice from professional scientists, and some tests will have to be done in a lab, but it’s us setting the agenda and choosing what questions we want to answer.
Why? Because what better way to get science doing stuff that’s relevant to people? And what better way to engage people with what science really is?
What kind of questions are you going to answer?
We don’t know yet. Isn’t that exciting?
This year there are four groups and each are going to research and discuss the questions they are interested in. They’ll work out what is feasible, and also think about what they most want to know. And then they’ll pick the questions to focus on.
Suggested questions so far include:-
- Is it important to burb babies? If so, what’s the best method?
- How important is milk in toddlers’ diets and how much does it matter if this is from cows, goats, sheep, oats or nuts?
- Why do so many babies twiddle the nipple while breastfeeding? And does it have a biological purpose?
- Do amber teething necklaces work? (Science says no, but no-one has actually done the experiment)
- Do different types of sanitary protection change how long your period lasts?
As you can see, it’s a really varied list of questions, involving lots of different areas of parenting and science.
Who we are
This project is the brainchild of Sophia Collins, an award-winning public engagement specialist. She developed I’m a Scientist, Get me out of Here! (a highly successful project bringing together scientists and school students) and ran it for many years. In 2013 she had a baby and began using reusable nappies on her son. She was frustrated by the lack of clear, evidence-based information about reusables, so she had the idea of Nappy Science Gang. This project was a great sucess answering several questions about cloth nappies that no-one had thought to research. You can find out all about it here: https://nappysciencegang.wordpress.com/
The members of the Parenting Science Gang are a group of parents (overwhelmingly mums, it must be said – but feel free to get involved dads, we don’t bite) who have questions they’d like to answer with science. They range from people with one science GCSE, to research scientists with PhDs in various areas. They are united by an interest in what we find out and a willingness to learn and experiment. The volunteers are all members of the four Parenting Science Gang facebook groups:
- UK Breastfeeding and Parenting Support Parenting Science Gang
- Breastfeeding Older Babies and Beyond Parenting Science Gang
- Dumfries and Galloway Bump, Baby and Beyond Parenting Science Gang
- Science-Aware Natural Parenting Parenting Science Gang
and were recruited from existing facebook groups.
Our project team is Rebecca Brueton, Sophia Collins, Tamasin Greenough Graham and Amy Strother.
Our evaluators for the project are Sarah West and Karen Bultitude.
Welcome to the Parenting Zone
What the Experts say
During this project, we are going to regularly invite scientists or industry professionals to do a one hour live chat with us, where we can seek expert answers to some of our many questions. You can find write-ups of the chats below:
- Helen Ball, whose research is in infant and parent sleep.
And if you’re really keen, you can have a look at some of the live chat highlights from the Nappy Science Gang project.
- Zion Lights, writer of The Ultimate Guide to Green Parenting
- Rob Aldridge and Suzi Gage who came back to tell us more about experiment design
- Louise Pendry, psychologist who studies parents’ attitudes to cloth nappies and cloth nappy online communities
- Esha Massand, neuroscientist who studies the links between Down’s syndrome (DS) and Alzheimer’s disease
- Philip Powell, who researches the psychology of disgust
- Helen Ball, who researches infant sleep
- Elena Hoicka, psychologist who studies joking, pretending and deception in babies
- Laura Boundy, psychologist whose work focuses on babies’ early gestures
- Alan Tapp, professor in marketing and behaviour change at UWE in Bristol
- Sam Durrant, Caroline Rowland and Michelle Peter, researchers of children’s language development from the Language 0-5 Project
- Amber Hatch, author of Nappy Free Baby: a practical guide to baby-led potty training from birth
- Jamie and Claire, researchers who study the role of family-based shared reading on language development
- Petra Boynton, psychologist who researches sex and relationships’ health (also find the follow-up Q+A here)
- Tom and Jonathan, from the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society of Chemistry
- Liz Kirk, developmental biologist
- Helen Cain, language therapist
- Katie and Silke, language researchers from Lancaster Uni Babylab
- Emma Weitkamp, Professor in Science Communication
- Emma McColm from LOVEmyBEACH
- Bella Starling, Wellcome Trust public engagement fellow