Qualitative Dataset: Neuroinclusive Accessibility Needs in Digital Citizen Science as Perceived by Zooniverse Participants, Derived from the 2024 User Survey

A large-scale study entitled Zooniverse Participatory Research Platform as a Neuro-Shared Online Space: A User Survey was conducted in 2024 on Zooniverse, the world’s largest people-powered research platform. The primary aims of the survey were to provide initial data on neurodiversity representation among contributors to digital citizen science and to gain first insights into the experiences of neurodivergent and neurotypical digital volunteers and researchers in this global, neuro-shared online space. The study received research ethics approval (R94294/RE001) from the Central University Research Ethics Committee at the University of Oxford. A subset of these data, consisting of free-text responses to the question: “Do you think the Zooniverse research experience could be improved for people with neurodivergent conditions? If so, how?”, was used to inform the development of accessibility guidelines for neurodiversity-friendly digital citizen science as part of the Neuro(Minorities)Science project. Neuro(Minorities)Science is a lived-experience participatory research group of 89 neurodivergent citizen scientists and allies from multiple countries who work remotely and asynchronously, in writing, to improve the accessibility of digital citizen science projects and platforms globally. This data subset was derived from 7,873 responses to a single survey question in 2024. The lead researcher manually pre-screened all responses to exclude: (1) blank fields (no response); (2) responses in languages other than English; (3) brief responses that did not address the question (e.g., “I don’t know,” “No opinion,” “I am not sure,” “Yes,” “No”); (4) irrelevant or explicitly abusive responses; and (5) personal identifiable information. This process resulted in 1,669 pre-filtered, de-identified free-text responses comprising the final dataset. This study was funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement number 101058677, as part of the IMPETUS project accelerator 2025 (https://impetus4cs.eu). ____Warning: The free-text responses in this dataset have not been edited and reflect a wide range of perspectives. As a result, the dataset may contain political statements related to the provision of neurodiversity-related accommodations in research participation, as well as language that may be inconsiderate or potentially triggering.