Research And Data As Tools In Advocates’ Decision-Making (Faunalytics)

This Faunalytics study looks at the benefits, barriers, and opportunities in animal advocates' use of research and data in their efforts.

Key Findings

Research and evidence in animal advocacy can be categorized in terms of five purposes, which may inform how the research should be undertaken. First, being evidence-based helps organizations establish their legitimacy. Almost all organizations report that framing their positions, priorities, and tactics as evidence-based increases their external legitimacy with all types of individuals and institutions they seek to influence. Research and evidence also support internal decision-making on how to act on foundational priorities. Research processes and outputs can build partnerships and alliances across animal advocacy organizations and with other related movements. Evidence is often used to catalyze action by individuals and institutions, and in communication more generally around identifying problems and solutions to animal welfare and wellbeing challenges.
Most organizations and audiences see peer-reviewed publications and the research behind them as the gold standard for rigor. Government and industry research is often seen as biased, but also the basis for the dominant systems and narratives and thus cannot be ignored. Animal advocacy organizations are well-positioned to identify research priorities, collect data related to internal strategies, and share evaluation evidence. However, when research is used for the first category, external legitimacy, it is best done by an academic or other institutional researcher not directly affiliated with a specific animal advocacy organization or effort.
Research is not often used to set foundational priorities for existing organizations, but it is used to shift tactics and identify emerging issues or opportunities for advocacy. That is, organizations are “tactic flexible and cause inflexible.” While they are not reorienting their missions based on research, they use research and data at every other level—looking for information that supports existing positions, adjusting data points and messaging when new information emerges, and pivoting or reorienting their tactics in the face of new data. Research and knowledge translation that is oriented toward solutions or catalyzing action is useful for a wide range of audiences.
Organizations need evidence syntheses that provide a ‘state of the state’ on specific topics, including agreement on key facts and figures when possible, as well as detailed annotated bibliographies, exhaustive literature reviews, or similar extensive summaries of the current state of the knowledge on general topics.
The most foundational gaps in the evidence base are related to how to effect change, especially regarding under-researched species and geographies. More social science research and knowledge translation is needed on the impact and efficacy of behavioral nudges on one hand and social movement tactics on the other. Organizations also noted that gaps in the evidence base related to particular species, often those that are low economic value or not common in the Global North, and related to specific geographies, especially in the Global South.
Challenges to using existing research include having the time and expertise to translate complexity and ambiguity in research findings into actionable information. More evidence is needed from evaluation and internal data collection about tactics that work AND tactics that do not work to achieve intended outcomes.
Many organizations seek out research both actively and passively. Organizations access new information somewhat passively through extensive affinity networks, and intentionally through knowledge translation hubs and trusted individuals and organizations when seeking information for specific programming and communication purposes.