Using the Grounded Theory to explore people's views on animal use: What factors influence people when they consider their views on animal use?

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University of Portsmouth, BSc (HONS) Psychology

Student Number: 282814

Social Psychology Year 2

Qualitative Methods

Using the Grounded Theory to explore people’s views on animal use: What factors influence people when they consider their views on animal use?

Word Count: 5800

Introduction:

Social psychologists use the term ‘attitude’ to refer to people’s evaluations of virtually any aspect of the social world.  People can have favourable or unfavourable reactions to issues, ideas, specific individuals, entire social groups, objects and even animals (Baron, Byrne, & Branscombe, 2006).  Often, attitudes are ambivalent in that we evaluate the attitude object/issue both positively or negatively. Attitudes are often acquired from others through social learning (classical conditioning, instrumental conditioning or observational learning.  Strong attitudes are most likely when they are based on extreme beliefs and personal experience with the attitude object which thereby is more likely to affect their behaviour (Baron, Byrne & Branscombe, 2006).  

One issue of the social world that people often form strong attitudes towards is that of ‘animal use’.  The term ‘animal use’ is used to describe a range of practices that involve the use of non-human animals by human beings, from using animals to test drugs, to aid the development of medical procedures, to using animals for their fur, to keeping animals as pets or even for entertainment purposes.  Animal use procedures can often benefit society through advancement on medical knowledge however; the cost of this does have its drawbacks of inflicting pain and often resulting in the death to a large extent of animals.  This therefore reflects the idea of ambivalence in attitudes as some individuals may be torn between feeling positively about the use of animals for increasing medical knowledge but may on the other hand may feel negatively towards other aspects of animal use such as the pain inflicted on the animals during the research or simply having strong negative attitudes about fox hunting or using animals for entertainment.

People’s views on animal use can very considerably and can be influenced by numerous factors such as gender, experience of animals, belief in animal mind (Knight, Aldert, Cherryman, & Nunkoosing, 2004), pet ownership, knowledge of animals and the species of animal. For example; domestic pets or attractive mammals were rated as less acceptable than unattractive mammals (rats) for the use of product testing research (Driscoll, 1992). A link between empathy towards people and empathy towards animals has been found which could influence people’s attitudes towards animal use (Galvin & Herzog, 1992). Undergraduate students found animals used in biomedical research morally acceptable and believed it plays a significant role in the treatment of human diseases which shows that some hold positive attitudes towards animal use (Hagelin, Hau & Carlsson, 1999).  It has also been found that pet ownership can influence attitudes towards animal use with 39% of pet owners finding it acceptable to use pet species in biomedical research than did non pet owners (52%) (Hagelin, Hau, & Carlsson 2002).

Therefore, it would seem intriguing to examine further what factors influence people when they consider their views on animal use and thus this will be the main focus for this research.  

In order to assess people’s attitudes towards animal use a qualitative method seems applicable in order to gather a detailed, descriptive, and in-depth overview of social and personal experiences of participants in relation to animal use. This will allow for the phenomenon to be explored intensively, as it only uses a small number of participants.  It also overrides the conventional quantitative methods used to explore areas in social psychology which makes this piece of research somewhat unique and it also has its advantage of enabling the participant to really think about and verbalise their attitudes.

The Grounded Theory is a qualitative method that seems highly appropriate for this research.  It is a method developed by sociologists to discover theory from data obtained from social research (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).  It takes a bottom-up approach and is the sampling and analysis of qualitative data gathered from unstructured data obtained from interviews and places great emphasis upon an attention to participants own accounts of social events and of their social worlds (Richardson, 1997).  In order to achieve this, Glaser & Strauss (1967) advocated the development of a system where the researcher works systematically through the data generating codes to refer to concepts, categories and themes which leads to a theory at the end of the research. The researcher has no preconceptions of categories or theories before analysing the data and hence; findings are said to be ‘grounded’ in the data itself.  This therefore will be used to discover the underlying factors relating to people’s attitudes towards animal use.

Method:

Design:

The Grounded Theory was used to analyse interview transcripts for 17 participants. The interviews were conducted by Sarah Knight: Department of Psychology; University of Portsmouth (2004). The researcher used random sampling to select 5 transcripts for their own interpretation of the data set also using the Grounded Theory.  

Participants:

Nine men and eight women, aged 22-65 years old, were interviewed about why they might have different attitudes towards different types of animal use.  The 17 participants represented the number of participants needed to reach theoretical saturation.  This refers to the stage of data collection when new ideas cease to emerge.  However, the researcher only selected 6 interview transcripts to analyse due to a restricted time limit.

Material and Apparatus:

The transcripts were coded and categorised using different coloured highlighter pens to break down the text into chunks.  A manuscript was kept for note taking purposes including the researchers thoughts, ideas, and examples from the data in order to generate categories and themes which lead to an over all theory.  

Procedure:

Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted by Sarah Knight (2004).  Each in-depth interview followed a flexible format that allowed all participants to explore their ideas and attitudes about animal use and their relationships with animals.  The same researcher interviewed all 17 participants.  Each interview started by asking whether the participant held different attitudes towards different types of animal use and, if so, why this was the case.  In keeping with the principle of theoretical sampling (Strauss & Corbin, 1997), new issues were included in the interview protocol as they arose, to be used in subsequent interviews.  These included topics such as farming issues, knowledge of animal use, whether participants considered there to be alternatives to using animals, the perceived costs and benefits of animal use, physical characteristics of animals, and attitudes and beliefs concerning birds, fish, and farm animals.  Participants were encouraged to lead the interview and discuss issues that they perceived as important and relevant.  Each interview took between 45-90 minutes.  All interviews were transcribed verbatim, with double spacing and wide margins for notes during coding; this resulted in 274 pages of transcripts.  Each participant was given a number code, and each line of the text was numbered to facilitate location and indexing when necessary.

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The researcher however, used a random sample of 6 interview transcripts for analysis due to a restricted time limit.  These included participant numbers 4, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 15.  The researcher used the Grounded Theory method to analyse the data through coding and categorising the text using different coloured highlighter pens to make it easier to spot themes which consequently results in a proposed theory.  Notes were recorded in a manuscript which was later referred to in the results and discussion.

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