Citizen Science and Multimedia Didactic Resources: Knowledge of Mosquito-Borne Diseases in an Urban Area of Southwestern Colombia.

Abstract

Citizen science resources have had great relevance in community educational intervention, fostering interest in ecological research projects. This study investigated the influence of the application of multimedia didactic resources focused on citizen science and analysis of sociodemographic variables to improve the levels of ecological knowledge about mosquito-borne diseases. For this, a probabilistic sample of 172 participants from an urban sector in southwestern Colombia was selected. A multimedia didactic material was designed for the educational intervention and evaluated by means of pretest and posttest. To assess whether the educational intervention was statistically significant, the data were processed with statistical inference to determine the influence of various variables (gender, age, marital status, schooling, and occupation) on each person's ecological knowledge. The findings showed a significant increase in the knowledge levels of the participants. The marital status variable (married and cohabiting) significantly influenced ecological knowledge. These participants are more likely to obtain high knowledge, associated with the prevention of their family environment. This study demonstrated that multimedia didactic strategies are an important factor to take into account in the structuring of environmental education and citizen science projects. For future research, it is suggested to deepen the relationship between sociodemographic variables and ecological knowledge.