What is the purpose of the study?
The purpose of this study is to identify vets’ perceptions and practices of tail docking, castration, dehorning and disbudding of cattle and sheep. We are interested in what practices are carried out, what pain alleviation is used and what vets’ perceptions or beliefs about the utility of alternative procedures might be. We are also interested in vets’ perceptions of pain in farm animals. The study is being conducted by Dr. Lesley Jessiman, Dr. Kenny Rutherford and Professor Cathy Dwyer who are members of the animal and veterinary sciences department at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC). The study is part of a five-year project funded by the Scottish Government through the Rural and Environment Science and Analytical Services Division (RESAS).
Procedures involved in the research.
If you agree to participate in this study, we will ask you to complete a short background questionnaire, which will ask you some questions such as your age, gender, years qualified as a vet, and the specific procedures you carry out on your farm. Following the background questionnaire is a survey that will ask you to respond to a series of statements in terms of your agreement, disagreement, or neutrality. The statements and questions all pertain to your experience of tail docking, castration, disbudding or dehorning, your experience and belief about farm animal pain and your use of pain alleviation drugs. The survey can be completed online via a link or will be sent out in the post with a stamped address return envelope. If you prefer to complete a hard copy of the survey, please contact: Lesley Jessiman (lesley.jessiman@sruc.ac.uk; Tel: 07871008935). Note, your address will not be stored/retained, it will be securely deleted as soon as the survey has been sent to you. We can also send you a copy via email that you can download, complete, scan and return via email or you can return via the post/mail.
We are also asking if volunteers would be willing to take part in a short interview either in person or via an online communication platform such as Zoom or Teams. If you would be willing to also take part in an interview, you can leave your name and contact information at the end of the survey and one of the researchers will get in touch to arrange a suitable date and time.
Potential Harms, Risks or Discomforts to Participants
We do not foresee any risks to you participating in this study. We are only interested in your experiences of routine farm procedures such as tail docking, castration, dehorning or disbudding. Please feel free to contact any of the researchers to ask further questions if you should have them. If at any point you do not wish to continue, then simply discard the survey or if you are doing the survey online simply close your browser or window on your computer. You are of course free to withdraw from the study at any point during the data collection process i.e., even after you have provided consent. Withdrawal from the study will not however be possible once your survey has been returned (online or in the mail), and all data has been collected as no personal identifiers such as your name will be attached to your individual data.
Potential Benefits
We hope the findings from this study will have a long-term benefit to the farming and vet community. The animal welfare team at SRUC are currently looking at alternative ways of carrying out tail docking and castration for example, which will afford the animal additional pain relief. We are also interested in identifying some of the barriers farmers face in terms of using pain relief drugs in order that we can identify how to help farmers overcome these barriers.
Confidentiality & Anonymity
All of the information that you provide is confidential. None of your individual data will be shared or discussed with anyone other than the members of the research team. All of your data will be anonymised. All data will be stored according to UK General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR). Your name will only appear on your consent form, which will be stored separately from your data. All hard copies of data will be securely stored in a locked cabinet.
For those who complete the online survey their data will be downloaded and securely removed from the online survey server ( www.jisc.ac.uk/gdpr). Your survey data will therefore be downloaded and stored on personal, password protected, computers belonging to the researchers. Further, only secure SRUC online storage sites will be used to store all of the data. As the findings from this study may also be disseminated amongst the academic, veterinary, and farming communities, via academic talks, conferences and/or an academic journal all possible personal identifiers will be removed from the findings. It will not in any way be possible to identify anyone in any of the findings reported.
All participants are invited to know the final conclusions drawn from the research by letting the researchers know that you would like a copy of the findings. Please email Dr. Lesley Jessiman (lesley.jessiman@sruc.ac.uk) with your contact details and she will ensure that a report is sent out to you as soon as the report is finalised. This should be no later than June 2024. Your contact details will be stored confidentially on a password protected SRUC storage system and securely deleted after the report is sent to you. The data from this study will not be destroyed but will be anonymised and securely stored on online data sharing repositories such as Figshare. Sharing data is seen as an example of best practice for researchers and is therefore more commonly a condition of funding bodies and some academic publications. However, we must assure you, it will not in any way be possible to identify individuals from the data.
Participation
Participating in this study is expected to take a maximum of 30 minutes of your time. Your participation is entirely voluntary. During data collection, you may withdraw at any point and for any reason with no consequences. If there are any questions in the short background questionnaire or the survey that you do not wish to answer, please feel free to leave these blank/out. You are free to leave out any questions you do not wish to answer. If you choose to not answer some of the questions you may also remain in the study. If you wish to withdraw during the survey, please simply close your browser or window or if you have a paper copy of the survey please just discard. Please note, if you discard the paper copy survey, please make sure to remove any personal identifiers such as your name.
Please also note, after your survey has been submitted, your name will be removed and so at that point it will be no longer possible to withdraw your individual data from the study.
Questions or Concerns:
If you have any questions about the study, or would like to know the findings, please contact: Dr. Lesley Jessiman (lesley.jessiman@sruc.ac.uk).
If you have any concerns regarding your rights or welfare as a participant in this research study, please contact SRUC Social Science Ethics (socsciethics@sruc.ac.uk). The ethics of this research project have been reviewed and approved by the Social Science Ethics Committee [Protocol Number:72738386]
Thank you