Psychology, Social Development, Social Motivations

When fellow animal advocates ask me questions about research on animal protection issues, I typically ask them if they have looked at our research primers. In response, I usually hear "Research what? Where?" I am guessing that many advocates, even those of you who follow our work, are not aware of the full wealth of free data we have available. Here I want to highlight HRC's research primers, since they are a free resource that can help all advocates better understand the issues on which they are working. So let me tell you a little about them.

Every year, the Humane Research Council conducts the Animal Tracker survey to determine attitudes and beliefs regarding issues of relevance to animal advocates. In Wave 1 of this study, conducted in 2008, we asked over 1,500 people the following question: "Social and political movements use a variety of tactics to create change for their issues. In general, how much do you support or oppose each of the following tactics?" We asked specifically about the following tactics: anti-cruelty investigations, using media to reach the public, speaking in schools, filling lawsuits to protect animals, state ballot initiatives lobbying government officials, calling for product boycotts, and demonstrating or protesting.

There is a lack of understanding as to the efficacy of different tactics available to animal advocates, as HRC has noted in the past. In this series, I present the available research in the hopes it can help animal advocates direct their campaigns. In this first post I define and discuss tactics in general. In Part 2 of the series I will examine public attitudes toward different types of tactics. Part 3 will review the efficacy of “shock advocacy” and Part 4 will look at the current use social media to effect change for animals.