by Hi everyone, I just wanted to share what Nick Cooney told me about THL's coming research. I asked him if donations can be earmarked specifically to veg-ads research. He says yes, by mailing him after making a donation. This is his response:
I asked some questions about if the donation would fund something that would happen anyway, what would happen if they don't get the grant and when the decision on the grant is made.
How good do you guys think this funding opportunity is? Does anyone know more about the studies?
It's sounds great that other animal charities are planning to do research as well btw! I will let you guys know if I get more information on the 14 studies that they eventually want to do.
we are working with some researchers at the University of Texas right now on designing a very thorough study on the impact of the facebook veg ads on diet change. We hope to launch it and start data collection next month, to have results by the end of the year, and the researchers are currently trying to get funding from the U of Texas for the costs involved with it (which are around $4-5,000).
The current plan includes a control group, follow-up surveying without revealing that the survey has to do with the website; measuring intent to change, actual change, and steps taken toward changing; and having tens of thousands of participants initially (with the number that actually report their diet change being much smaller than that, but still sizeable). The researchers plan to submit it for publication afterwards, so it will be done in a rigorous manner
So if that were the sort of thing you (and others) would be interested in funding, that would definitely help enable us to proceed with it and get very good data!
If you’re interested, all you’d have to do is donate to THL ( at http://www.TheHumaneLeague.com/donate ), and then email me to let me know how much you donated and that you want it to go specifically toward this research, and we’ll use it accordingly. If the University of Texas ends up giving us grant money to do it, so that your donation wasn’t needed for this study, we could put your donation toward the next similar study we do – we have a number being planned and in the pipeline.
I asked some questions about if the donation would fund something that would happen anyway, what would happen if they don't get the grant and when the decision on the grant is made.
“The researchers working on this particular study are interested in adding a few other conditions into the study, which are indeed interesting, but which would up the cost considerably – to about $15k (to do everything they want to do). However, they also told me that they have $4k already and they are right now applying for the remainder from their University, and they are somewhat optimistic about getting it, so it’s possible that we’ll be able to get all the funding we need from the study from the University. If we don’t, we’ll cut out some of those additional conditions, and be back to a situation of needing some extra funding to go forward with the study. They expect to know in 3-4 weeks.
As for the other grant I mentioned, because we are *hoping* that money for this Veg Ads study comes through from the University, the grant request we are putting in to the one donor who expressed interest will be focused on other research projects we want to do, virtually all of which are split-tests and similar studies designed to make vegan advocacy efforts more effective (as opposed to measure the diet change impact of current interventions). I’ve been in touch with the 5 other main veg advocacy orgs and gotten from them a list of research they would hope to have done, and compiled it into a list of 14 studies we hope to eventually do. I’d be happy to share the list with you if that would be of interest in the event this Veg Ads study gets fully funded by the University. That is definitely research that would not happen/will not happen until we get funding for it.
What might be of particular interest with those is that, in order to get them done, our current projected costs are pretty low for each study but that also means they are not as thorough as they could be. So not only is there need/opportunity for funding those, but additional money for them would definitely make them more thorough and they definitely will not be more thorough unless someone decides to donate money with the specific intent of making them so.”
How good do you guys think this funding opportunity is? Does anyone know more about the studies?
It's sounds great that other animal charities are planning to do research as well btw! I will let you guys know if I get more information on the 14 studies that they eventually want to do.
