Interactive Data-Gathering Posters as a Research Tool: A Case Study Assessing Public Opinion on Incorporation of Natural Behavior into Management Systems

摘要

An innovative form of poster presentation was developed and piloted, with the aim of generating data rather than just presenting it. This tool was then used with three different stakeholder groups (an international conference, a regional veterinary conference, and a regional school leadership day) to gather participant opinion on an important component of animal welfare (naturalness). The poster promoted interaction between attendees and the poster presenter via ranking stickers and allowed participants to provide direct input about their top three areas of importance regarding the topic. We demonstrated a proof-of-concept, therefore, did we not make comparisons across cohorts; however, we showed that when applied in different settings, the poster gathered some consistent opinions on which behaviors are the best exemplars of naturalness in goats. While we identified that response bias and sampling bias could both be issues with the type of interaction promoted by this tool, we suggest that corrections used in other traditional data gathering methods (e.g., focus groups) could be applied to alleviate these biases. The flexibility of this interactive tool, and its capability to shift the audience from being the viewer of, to the interactive participant in, research, presents a novel alternative to traditional poster presentations.