Abstract: Citizen science programs are a useful and low-cost way to expand long-term ecological monitoring. However, concerns about quality often prevent data from these programs from being utilized by the scientific community. In this study, we evaluate the accuracy of student monitoring data for the Hawaiian intertidal. We conducted eight field trips to five Hawaiian intertidal sites during April and May of 2007. Working independently, students and two researcher teams simultaneously collected data on diversity and abundance of intertidal organisms using the same standard sampling techniques. We compared each groups' similarity and diversity values, using the variation between researcher teams as a benchmark when evaluating student accuracy. Our results indicate that abundance estimates did not differ significantly between researchers and students (paired t-test, n = 7, p = 0.45). However, researchers tend to estimate greater diversity than students. These results indicate that student data is accurate for dominant species with high abundances.