Designing a study on outreach method

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Jamie in Chile
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Designing a study on outreach method

Post by Jamie in Chile »

Jebus wrote: Mon Mar 05, 2018 7:59 am
Jamie in Chile wrote: Sun Mar 04, 2018 9:02 pm Maybe someone watching this thread is going to eat more meat as a result because they saw vegans being rude - or thought you were being rude.
It's possible, but isn't it also possible that someone is turned off by veganism because they don't want to be part of a bullied group? Isn't it also possible that people find uncontroversial posts boring and don't bother to finish reading the thread which may contain good points about veganism?

Most vegans seem to believe that a friendly approach is the most effective way of promoting veganism and I agree that this is the best approach when speaking to someone person to person for the first time. However, I am not convinced that a less aggressive approach is the most effective in the following situations:

With people with whom one has already unsuccessfully tried the friendly approach several times.

With people who generally don't listen.

During online forum debates.

While delivering a monologue or answering questions in a Q/A setting (Gary Yourofsky may be the most successful person in history in converting carnists to vegans and he never sugar coated the message).


Going to go off on a bit of a tangent here...

I think there is a need for a study to test whether aggressive tactics or soft tactics work better. It would be expensive ($100,000 ball park maybe), and perhaps need collaboration between different groups or a wealthy donor in order to get such a number. Here's one way you do it.

You send someone to give a talk and do workshops aggressively using a predominantly ethical message and saying things like "meat is murder" "meat is morally wrong" "you want to be on the right side of history". They share information such as horrific videos and facts like baby chickens are thrown into grinders. They say that cheese is just as immoral as meat, and that totally avoiding animal products is the only morally acceptable course if you have truly understood about animal rights. And they talk about speciesism. In the workshops they become argumentative - but still polite - and try and win the argument.

Meanwhile, someone else is giving talks using a variety of soft ethical arguments "I personally became vegan because I didn't want to participate in the cruel system of factory farming" and health and environmental arguments. They engage with others in the workshops, with a listening-focused, non judgemental approach saying things like "eating meat only two days a week is a great way to reduce your impact on the enviroment, I"d appluad you if you could do it" or "if you like cheese, keep eating cheese. What about chickens. Do you think you could consider giving up chickens?"

Then go back and repeat the workshops and ask people what they've learned. Ask people to fill in a survey saying how likely they are to reduce or eliminate meat as a result of the talk and then later have following up questionnaires after perhaps 6 months and again at 2 years to find out how many reduced, went veg etc.

The subjects of the study will only listen to one or the other talk/workshop, not both. So there are two distinct groups. However, the people giving the talks would have to either swop over roles (aggressive vs listening) or there would have to be various diferent people giving talks. Otherwise one approach might win simply because its proponent was more likeable and charismatic, irrespective of chosen approach. You might add a control group. That is people that filled in surveys but never received any workshops or talks.

You deal in only closed environments where you have a very high chance of being allowed back in later, including an explicit promise to have the final surveys filled in at the 6 month mark and a financial incentive perhaps on the 2-year survey. I am thinking of schools and universities perhaps because these could be offered to the students as part of their schooling. You would want to have it done as part of a course, to everyone enrolled in a class, for better numbers and in order to avoid bias - i.e. if you volunteer for something, you might be open minded in general, or be specifically interested in veganism in the first place. Which needs to be avoided.

Schools and universities would mean producing a certain result favouring a certain approach that wouldn't necessarily be applicable to older people. The study would need a large sample size, hundreds or thousands of people.

There are a lot of things that would need to be considered.
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Jebus
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by Jebus »

There would likely be significant differences in outcome but would be interesting if the study could reveal if subject controls have any impact on the results, i.e. do women react differently to men, highly educated differently to poorly educated etc.

I agree with the design except for this:
Jamie in Chile wrote: Mon Mar 05, 2018 7:35 pmMeanwhile, someone else is giving talks using a variety of soft ethical arguments
To avoid bias, the same person should be the one acting out the different approaches.

Also, I would include a third (middle ground) delivery approach.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by brimstoneSalad »

This is an interesting topic idea, I split it off so nobody will miss it and we don't derail the other topic. (quoted Jebus for context since his post was relevant in the other topic).

I suspect the best of both worlds is an aggressive moderate approach. That is, a moderate message delivered pretty aggressively so that it can get the needed attention and won't be boring, but congratulates people on small changes and making the transition to any improvement.

I don't think that's something we see often, because aggressive personalities tend to take extremes.
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by carnap »

Why would such a study cost $100,000? Studies can be done cheaply, you just need a group of dedicated volunteers.

But the study design as stated suffers from a serious flaw that would make it largely pointless, namely, there is no control group. You'd have to have a third group of people that saw neither lecture and compare them to the other groups. That is important because some percent of people will be thinking about eating less meat, etc regardless of attending the lecture and what you really want to know is whether the lecture *increases* the rate from the baseline.
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Lay Vegan
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by Lay Vegan »

carnap wrote: Tue Mar 06, 2018 12:42 pm But the study design as stated suffers from a serious flaw that would make it largely pointless, namely, there is no control group. You'd have to have a third group of people that saw neither lecture and compare them to the other groups.
The addition of a control group was mentioned at the bottom of the fifth paragraph. Read above (or below). ↓
Jamie in Chile wrote: Mon Mar 05, 2018 7:35 pm You might add a control group. That is people that filled in surveys but never received any workshops or talks.


It would certainly be interesting to the differences in outcome by gender, class, and level of education. Activists could use this information to better tailor their message to different audiences.

I'd add in a third group that uses combination of soft and aggressive tactics in moderation. Maybe show a brief clip from something like Earthlings Documentary (with proper warning and context) followed by an informal q/a session. The lecturer would also acknowledge and support "baby steps" taken to reduce animal harm like reducitarianism, vegetarianism, pescatarianism as noble goals.
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by carnap »

Lay Vegan wrote: Tue Mar 06, 2018 5:10 pm The addition of a control group was mentioned at the bottom of the fifth paragraph. Read above (or below).
I missed that, but its more than something you "might add" but rather critical if the study is going to have any value. You need to know what the "baseline" is for interest in reducing meat, going vegan, etc in the general population because its obviously not zero. Without this information you won't know whether either tactic helped at all.

The control group would have to be tracked just like the other groups.
I'm here to exploit you schmucks into demonstrating the blatant anti-intellectualism in the vegan community and the reality of veganism. But I can do that with any user name.
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Jebus
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by Jebus »

carnap wrote: Tue Mar 06, 2018 12:42 pm But the study design as stated suffers from a serious flaw that would make it largely pointless, namely, there is no control group.
I don't see the purpose of a control group. I would design it as follows:

Three different interventions:

Soft approach
Medium approach
Harsh approach

The subjects will answer a few questions before and after the intervention.

An example of such a question includes:
How likely is it that you would change to a 100% plant based diet?
Highly unlikely
Unlikely
Unsure
Likely
Highly Likely

The same question would be asked after the intervention.

If time and budget allows, I would add a few questions 6 months after the intervention. Such include:

Are you currently on a plant based diet?
Have you recently reduced your meat consumption?
How to become vegan in 4.5 hours:
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2.Watch Cowspiracy (Environment)
3. Watch Earthlings (Ethics)
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Jebus wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 11:03 am I don't see the purpose of a control group. I would design it as follows:
A control is pretty important, because it might show that one approach is actually worse than doing nothing at all.

Or it might show that the difference in that approach and doing nothing is so small that it's not worth the money using that approach (let's assuming it's cheaper than the more effective ones).

It can give us a real sense of impact so we can compare approaches when there are differences in cost.
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by Jebus »

brimstoneSalad wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:46 pm
A control is pretty important, because it might show that one approach is actually worse than doing nothing at all.
I think it is safe to assume that doing nothing at all won't change the subjects' thoughts or actions on the issue. Comparing that assumption to the before and after question responses would tell us if one approach is worse than doing nothing at all.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, or perhaps you misunderstood my study design.
How to become vegan in 4.5 hours:
1.Watch Forks over Knives (Health)
2.Watch Cowspiracy (Environment)
3. Watch Earthlings (Ethics)
Congratulations, unless you are a complete idiot you are now a vegan.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Designing a study on outreach method

Post by brimstoneSalad »

Jebus wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 3:23 pm
brimstoneSalad wrote: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:46 pm
A control is pretty important, because it might show that one approach is actually worse than doing nothing at all.
I think it is safe to assume that doing nothing at all won't change the subjects' thoughts or actions on the issue. Comparing that assumption to the before and after question responses would tell us if one approach is worse than doing nothing at all.

Perhaps I am misunderstanding you, or perhaps you misunderstood my study design.
Doing nothing at all, people may find their way to veganism on their own through exposure to these ideas, or just thinking about it.

It's possible that an aggressive lecture could put people off going vegan who were already inclined to it, and might have done if they didn't hear that lecture at all.
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