We’ve seen a lot of change in our relatively short existence in the movement. Early on, ACE was one of few organizations working to synthesize the existing research, and now we’re in a position where there are lots of organizations doing really great research. This has led to a really positive collaborative spirit, and strengthened the body of research we have available to us in the movement. We are now seeing substantially more funding into research that is of a better quality and using stronger norms (e.g. use of the Open Science Framework). We think there is still room to improve—it can sometimes feel like there is a disconnect between organizations focused on direct work and those that are conducting research, in that it is hard to know what is best to prioritize to serve their interests, and to what extent they are utilizing that research. At ACE, this has caused us to realign our research aims towards conducting research that primarily improves our ability to conduct evaluations and evaluate grants in our Effective Animal Advocacy Fund, as we can be more certain of the impact that research has.
Regarding your question about using more sophisticated techniques in causal inference: Absolutely! We’d love to see more of this type of research.
Regarding your question about the allocation of resources in the movement: My intuition is that our balance is not terrible right now. To give a better answer, I would need to know exactly what the allocation currently is.
Regarding small sample sizes: we are worried about this too. It’s important to consider the full range of evidence when RCTS aren’t an option.
We’ve seen a lot of change in our relatively short existence in the movement. Early on, ACE was one of few organizations working to synthesize the existing research, and now we’re in a position where there are lots of organizations doing really great research. This has led to a really positive collaborative spirit, and strengthened the body of research we have available to us in the movement. We are now seeing substantially more funding into research that is of a better quality and using stronger norms (e.g. use of the Open Science Framework). We think there is still room to improve—it can sometimes feel like there is a disconnect between organizations focused on direct work and those that are conducting research, in that it is hard to know what is best to prioritize to serve their interests, and to what extent they are utilizing that research. At ACE, this has caused us to realign our research aims towards conducting research that primarily improves our ability to conduct evaluations and evaluate grants in our Effective Animal Advocacy Fund, as we can be more certain of the impact that research has.
Regarding your question about using more sophisticated techniques in causal inference: Absolutely! We’d love to see more of this type of research.
Regarding your question about the allocation of resources in the movement: My intuition is that our balance is not terrible right now. To give a better answer, I would need to know exactly what the allocation currently is.
Regarding small sample sizes: we are worried about this too. It’s important to consider the full range of evidence when RCTS aren’t an option.