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Research As An Impactful Intervention For Animals

10/29/2019

2 Comments

 
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Conducting research is essential for identifying high-impact interventions and assessing the effectiveness of existing strategies. Unfortunately, the historical impact of research within the animal welfare space has been limited by poor quality studies, a lack of experienced researchers, and organizations’ lack of responsiveness to findings. In this report, we consider various approaches to animal welfare research and their prospects of being translated into positive impact for animals.
This report identifies nine crucial considerations regarding the funding and talent landscape of the animal welfare movement. These considerations are used to evaluate 16 potential paths to using research to enhance the impact of the movement. The report analyzes the interrelationships between the actions of researchers and NGOs and summarizes some historical evidence regarding the influence of research on the effectiveness of activist movements. 
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Of the approaches considered, we think that research that informs existing corporate campaigns is among the highest impact paths for research. For example: should activists prioritize demanding that corporations keep chickens cage-free, slaughter chickens less painfully, or nutritionally fortify their chicken feed? Research that helps corporate campaigners identify which of these asks makes a bigger difference to the welfare of the animals could double or triple the impact of the considerable resources invested in these campaigns. 

Another important finding was the importance of a research agenda that influences funding landscapes, which would potentially direct money from lower to higher impact interventions and shift the incentives under which organizations operate. This would involve surveying larger and more well-informed funders to determine what types of research would further improve their funding decisions and then conducting that research. This methodology could be used in parallel with many other research strategies. 
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Some additional paths that we considered include research coordination, randomized control trials on animal welfare interventions, deeper reports and summaries on interventions, and improving impact evaluations for existing animal organizations. These were assessed to have less potential for impact.
The full report includes a summary of our research, taking into account the uncertainties associated with different types of campaigns.
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2 Comments
Michael Aird
11/8/2019 10:38:44 pm

Very interesting report.

I was a little confused by the point "By our estimates, it seems likely that choosing the best, compared to the worst, ask could double or triple the impact of an entire campaign."
It seems like the relevant factor in the counterfactual impact of the proposed ask research organization is the difference between the impact of the ask that's campaigned for due to the organization's research vs the impact of the ask that would've been campaigned for otherwise. It seems reasonable to guess that the ask that would've been campaigned for otherwise is at least as good as the median ask (and maybe better, if existing research or common sense is a decent guide), rather than being the worst ask.
This could make the impact a lot less than a doubling or tripling, even if that is indeed the difference between the impacts of the best and worst asks.

Or by "worst ask", did the report already just mean "the ask that is likely to have been campaigned for otherwise"?

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Joey
11/18/2019 02:38:35 am

Worst ask in this case is the worst ask that is being considered seriously by implementation organizations. For example, the weakest ask that had a above 30% chance of being chosen absent a research organization.

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