Unless you subscribe to our e-newsletter, you may have missed the announcement of HRC’s new research training workshops. You can choose from three standard training topics including hour-long, half-day, and full-day formats offered online or in person, or we’ll be happy to customize a workshop for you. Keep reading for details about the different types of workshops and formats that we offer to advocates, at discounted rates, and then contact HRC to discuss arranging a workshop for your team. Also in this month’s update: Profound wildlife experiences; 3 steps to better advocacy; and consumer decision-making about animal-friendly products.
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HRC offers “standard” training in three basic tracks, each of which is available as a one-hour, half-day, or full-day training session. All presentations will emphasize the points that are of most interest to you or your team and HRC can also further customize each track, for an added cost. Additionally, HRC will be more than happy to develop an entirely new track for your team and/or organization if the standard tracks do not suit your needs.
Track 1: Where Are We? The Status of Animals and Public Opinion in the U.S.
Track 2: What Do We Know? In-Depth Review of Selected Animal Issues
Track 3: What Can We Learn? Using and Conducting Research for Animals
Learn more about HRC’s research training workshops
On a related note, HRC advisor and strategic expert Caryn Ginsberg recently wrote about how to be a more effective advocate and identified three easy steps to help improve your animal advocacy. Caryn’s blogs provide great insight for helping animal advocates understand how our target audience feels and how best to reach them.
Two new database items piqued my interest more than usual in the past month. First, researchers concluded that “profound wildlife experiences” have potential positive effects for wildlife because they result in both attitudinal and behavior changes in those who experience them. Beyond helping wildlife, this research has implications regarding the motivating factors for a wide variety of animal-friendly behavior changes. Rightfully so, these “trigger points” are of increasing interest to animal advocacy groups looking to persuade people to make positive changes for animals.
Second, researchers at Wageningen University in the Netherlands authored a paper presenting “a synthesis of research on the role of animal welfare in consumer decision-making.” When it comes to consumer perception, the fact that a higher standard of animal welfare is associated with higher quality animal products presents both opportunities and challenges for animal advocates. On one hand, it is certainly a positive that consumers are willing to pay for improvements to animal care; it makes implementing reforms much easier. On the other hand, it may be dangerous to implicitly or explicitly affirm the perception that meat is desirable or acceptable; in the long term, this may be a barrier to reducing consumption of animal products.
As mentioned last month, we are preparing to release the results of Wave 4 of HRC’s Animal Tracker, our annual public opinion and behavior survey of U.S. adults. The full report will come out in the next 2-3 weeks, but the results so far indicate a general decline in support for animal issues since 2008, including decreasing support for all of the advocacy tactics we asked about in the survey, including anti-cruelty investigations, protests, boycotts, and lobbying government officials. Stay tuned for the complete results, which will be available for free to registered HumaneSpot.org users (registration is also free; go here to apply).
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